Burn
by The Bella Cat
Summary: "I was waiting," he says, his mouth dry. "Waiting for what?" "You," there's no use denying it any longer. She knows, she has to. When Daryl finds Beth, he has to let go of his demons, even if that means letting go of her.
1. Chapter 1

**This started off as a smutty little one shot and morphed into something else. It demanded more from me and I hope I did it justice. I really wanted to write a Daryl/Beth story where I could get inside Daryl's head and try and round him off, give a voice to the thoughts behind those lingering looks. I don't know if I succeeded but it's a start. So this is it. Take it for what it is.**

**I have a soundtrack for this fic, mainly songs that inspired me. It won't make any difference to your enjoyment (or lack thereof) but I'm adding it here anyway and will add more for future chapters.**

**Sun and Moon - Black Lab**  
**Save Yourself - Stabbing Westward**  
**Hurt - Nine Inch Nails**

**This is a Bethyl story, if you don't like the pairing you won't like this.**

**And yeah, I don't own Daryl Dixon (or any other WD characters, but he's the one I am most upset about)**

* * *

**Chapter 1: Hell**

She's crying. He only realises it after the third time she says his name, the pleading in her voice, the hitch in her throat.

"Daryl," her voice is loud enough to get his attention, loud enough to cut through the adrenalin-fuelled buzz that has his muscles twitching and his mind racing.

He turns to look at her. She stands in the middle of the ugly square rug, positioned like a chess piece.

"Daryl, please," she says again. She moves slightly towards him, arms trembling, fingers flexing. He's not sure it's an invitation but goes to her anyway. No thinking, none of the dumbass voices in his head getting in the way. He just goes, pulling her into his arms, crossbow clanging to the ground as he allows her to wrap herself around him, while he breathes in the musty scent of her sweat, her dirty hair. He doesn't care. It's the best smell in the world right now.

The past 24 hours have been hell. At least the seventh circle, maybe the eighth but Daryl can hardly remember because he hadn't been allowed to read _Dante's Inferno_ as a kid. His old man had called it "pretentious college boy trash" and tossed it away with all his Mother's other books when Daryl was twelve. Made a huge fucking bonfire out of her collection while his Ma had cried into the spent cigarettes festering in her ashtray.

So, no he hadn't read it, but his Mom had told him about it once, right before one of her religious episodes when she holed herself up in her bedroom with a bottle of Jack and prayed with all her being that God would take her away from his old man.

And then she'd gone and died in a fire.

Sometimes God has a shitty sense of humour.

Either way he knows the basics - she'd given him that much - even if his recollection was fuzzy. Souls in torment, fire and brimstone and gnashing of teeth, criminals assigned to various levels of torture depending on the misdeed. So he figures if hell is a real place - something he doubts - and there's specific digs for murderers and sadists, then he's somehow just run through it and come out on the other side. Not unscathed, not reborn, not rejuvenated. Just alive. And right now, that's good enough for him. In fact it's better than good, it's positively, fucking fantastic with a goddamned cherry on top. Because there's been a spot of heaven in this day of hell. No, more than a spot, a great big chunk of the divine. He's glad he's not a religious man, or he'd start calling himself blessed or something. He isn't, so he won't, but he can't deny that by rights he should be dead, _they_ should be dead. And yet somehow they weren't, even though it didn't make any sense, even though they should both be lying together in a ditch somewhere, bullets in their brains. A tangled, putrid final embrace, a fitting end to them and the world they lived in.

When heaven and hell combine sometimes it spits out some crazy-ass shit.

He'd found her.

Or, more accurately, Len had found her. That was hell's little joke, its little kick in the nuts.

Len. Fucking Len.

Daryl had been following Joe's group for three weeks, maybe a month. He couldn't remember any more, time loses its meaning in the apocalypse no matter how many times old men in stupid hats wind their wristwatches. What he does remember was that he was looking for an exit of sorts when it happened, a moment to slip away from these post-cataclysm, wackjob cowboys. He'd known from the first day they found him that it wasn't going to end well. Couldn't end well. These guys, they were the worst kind of bad news before the world went to shit. Now the kind of bad news they were didn't bear thinking about. He'd figured he could handle it, thought they were like Merle. They weren't. Merle was a pussy cat compared to them. Sure, his brother could talk the talk, but when it came down to it, Daryl didn't think even he would have been able to walk the walk. And Merle was right, Daryl had always been the sweet one. Ain't no way he would have been able to keep up with these hooligans, sooner or later some shit would have gone down and he wouldn't have been able to stay quiet. Loneliness was one thing, but this? This level of depravity? That was another.

Thus, he'd been planning his own extraction and the fancy-ass Atlanta house they were ransacking was as good a point as any to part ways. Not that he planned on a big farewell. Wasn't looking for a goodbye card or a cake. Keep things simple, uncomplicated. Wait until he was on watch and everyone was asleep and slip off into the night, down the road, into the forest, towards the tracks. With any luck, it would be early morning before they noticed he was gone.

At least that had been the plan.

It didn't work out. Not exactly.

He was stripping a red fleece blanket from a double bed when he heard Len shouting, "Claimed! Claimed!"

He'd ignored it at first even though Len sounded more excited than usual. Most likely it was something dumb, another cottontail, a doily, a deflated basketball. Who the hell knew what Len liked? The guy was wack.

But then he heard a small shriek followed by a thud and Len's increasingly agitated voice booming "Claimed! Claimed!" like some kind of mantra. It was the way he always said it, like he could somehow make things the way he wanted them if he just shouted loud and long enough. Daryl knew enough shitheads like that. Hell, there were times he was one of them - the more noise you made, the bigger dick you had. Asshole. And then he'd heard the shriek again followed by a short, clipped "Stop!"

His legs were moving before his brain was in gear. He knew that voice, knew it like he knew his own. It had done nothing but sass him and call him out and needle him since the prison fell. It had sung him to sleep at night and opened his eyes and heart in the morning. It was her, it had to be and he hated himself for a second when he realised he hoped it wasn't. As if there was another woman on earth that deserved whatever Len had in store for her.

Sometimes, the apocalypse makes you play fast and loose with morality.

It had been a clusterfuck from the second he'd set foot in the lounge.

It was Beth, he had to blink a few times and mentally slap himself to be sure, but it was her, clothes torn and filthy - that yellow golf shirt barely recognisable under the grime, cardigan gone, hair a greasy blond bird nest. But it was her and in a moment which he later identified as ridiculously whimsical, he thought she looked beautiful.

She was Beth, it wasn't like she could look anything else.

She lay curled up in a corner, next to a broken floor lamp, Len grabbing at her while she tried to shield her face.

He ran to her, saying her name like a dumbass lovesick schoolboy, giving away his weakness almost immediately as she raised her head and hope flared in those big baby blues. It damn near killed him,

But not as much as her bruises, her scratches, Len's filthy fingers pressing into the pale skin of her arms, so tightly that the little meat she had on her bones bulged like a plumped cushion on either side of his hands.

"Get off her!" he shouted pushing Len aside, wincing at the purple blooms appearing on her flesh.

His hand hadn't even brushed her skin before he was wrestled to the ground. Tony, Harley and Dan raining blows down on him, dragging him to a nasty chintz couch, immobilising him. Shutting him down.

Len was amused, more than amused actually. He stood up slowly, taking his time to spit blood from his mouth, eyes twinkling as he swaggered over to Beth, snapping his hand against her wrist, pulling her to her feet and drawing her close.

"I _knew_ there was a bitch," his voice was gravelly, smug as he pressed his mouth to her hair, breathing deeply like she was his next meal. "No wonder you was walking around like a dead man. She's a fine one Bowman. A real fine one. Maybe a little skinny but oh so sweet where it counts."

She didn't flinch as Len pressed a hand to her chest, his lips ghosting close to her neck. She didn't do anything. She looked like she'd checked out, the way abused dogs do when it just becomes too much. When there's no more fight left and they go away to some safe corner of their heads. A look that says "do what you want, I won't fight you."

It broke his fucking heart.

But then Len grabbed her crotch, pressing a dirty palm against the faded fabric of her jeans. A hitching breath escaped her lips and there was a flicker in her eyes. He thought it was fear. Looking back he now knows it was anger. Rage.

He wrenched free, knocking Harley to the ground, stomping hard on Tony's feet as he hurled himself across the room.

He grabbed at Len's hair, filthy hands closing on the disgusting matted strands, and knocking his head against the wall hoping to see it pop like an overripe watermelon, before the rest of them regained their bearings and he was pummelled to the ground. They were harsher the second time round, using the butts of their rifles and a tyre iron they'd picked up from an abandoned gas stop. A searing pain exploded in his left shoulder as the iron came down again and again, bruising skin, spraining bone. He didn't care. All he wanted was to erase that glazed look from her eyes, wipe the crusted blood from her skin, soothe the purple bruises marring her flesh.

Maybe it took a while for her to realise it really was him, maybe she hadn't had time to give herself that mental slap, maybe she only realised the gravity of the situation when she saw him go down under their boots but suddenly she was sobbing his name, shouting to leave him be, twisting away from Len's grasp, fighting and screaming and biting. Feral, wild but small. The smallest of the group. No match for a full grown man, even a cocksucker like Len. When he cuffed her she went down, almost immediately, head banging hard against the empty wall cabinet before she sprawled out on the floor.

Their eyes met briefly across the room. A moment that said nothing and everything as he thought back to their last encounter. The way she'd needled his feelings out of him, the way she'd even given him hope that they could have it, that she wouldn't reject him. All he wanted to do was tell her now, once and for all how he felt, before it was too late.

But the fact was, it was too late.

_(So what change your mind?)_

_You, Beth. Fucking, you._

As the blows rained down on him, he wanted to laugh at the irony that yes, he had found a way out. After all the time he'd been looking, this was the easiest way to check out. It should have been funny. But it wasn't because he was leaving Beth behind. That was another of hell's little jokes. As always anything he touched turned to shit. She'd been drawn into the vortex of his cursed existence and now he was leaving her, alone and afraid. They'd abuse her and then discard her, if she was lucky.

If she wasn't, well...

Vaguely, he was aware of Harley's raised boot coming towards his face. This was it. This was the way it ended. He wasn't afraid of dying, hell couldn't be worse than this. The ninth circle was looking good right now, the ring for traitors, because that's what he was. That's where he deserved to burn for checking out on her now.

He just prayed they wouldn't damage his brain too badly … so he could come back and eat them alive.

And then Joe ordered a halt.

"We ain't animals, gentlemen," he said and Daryl tried to snort but a stream of blood erupted from his nose instead.

Joe looked at him, eyes cool, mouth set but not angry.

"Look at you Daryl," Joe's voice sounded like he was admonishing a disobedient child as he pulled him to his feet and roughly shoved him back onto the couch. He sat down with a wet thwack, his left shoulder jarring, blood running down his arm and seeping into the ugly flower patterned upholstery. He suddenly felt absurdly worried about dirtying the furniture, although there wasn't much that wouldn't be an improvement on the baby blue background and cerise roses. Christ, there were even dogs on it, beagle puppies with goofy grins. Some people man, some fucking people.

"Gentlemen, I need everyone to just calm down," Joe said evenly, sitting down on an overstuffed, yet equally ugly armchair across from Daryl. "Take a breath, sit your asses down and just reflect."

"I claimed her Joe," Len's voice had a petulant edge. "But he tried to take her anyway. He broke the rules Joe. He knows the rules and he broke them."

"Yes, Len, yes he did," Joe agreed never taking his eyes away from Daryl. "But let's all just take a moment here. Get our bearings."

They sat in silence for a while, all eyes on Joe, waiting for him to say something, anything. For his part, Joe remained still, looking out the window at the dreary grey sky, ignoring them all, leaning on the silence drawing it out. Outside the cutlery barrier they'd hung around the house tinkled in the wind but inside it was quiet. Quiet except for her small, hitching breaths and Len's heavy panting. Panting that would become heavier as the night wore on.

Harley shuffled. Tony scratched. Daryl seethed, watching Beth through bloodied eyes. She stared back, eyes locked on him as if he was some kind of answer, a blessing, a saviour. He wasn't. Because God sure as shit didn't answer prayers with Daryl Dixon.

Then, eventually, after what seemed like decades Joe looked up, his gaze drifting over each of them, barely registering Beth shoved into the corner, Len looming over her, watching her like some kind of rabid guard dog.

"Now, we know the rules. Claimed means claimed. That's how things work," his voice was even, measured, as looked Daryl directly in the eye. "Daryl, do you have a previous claim on this woman?"

Daryl spat blood.

"Daryl?"

"Yeah," he said eventually, trying to keep his eyes on Joe, away from Beth and the hope that was written all over her face. "She's mine."

"You claimed her?" Joe asked.

"We were together before."

"Before we found you at the roadside?" It was a stupid question. Of course it had been before they found him. What did they think? He'd been carrying her around in his backpack? And what? Decided now to let her out for air? Fuck these guys, fuck them with a bag full of salty dicks.

"Yeah."

"Ok," Joe's voice was oddly comforting and he turned to look at Len and Beth. "I think we'd all do well here to consider Daryl's point of view for a moment. This was his bitch. He's had her, they were together and she belonged to him. So he sees her now. In his mind she's already claimed. Claimed by him."

"Aw, hell no Joe," Len said, dragging Beth closer. "I saw her first. I claimed her. I don't give a shit if he's had her a hundred times over. She's mine because I claimed her. Those are the rules."

"Screw the rules," Daryl growled.

"Yes, Len, yes you did," Joe agreed but the irritation in his voice was clear. "And she's yours now. I ain't disputing that. No one is. All I'm saying is that, in this case, there ain't no reason to beat a man to death. Tony, imagine it was Lenore. Or what if it was Betty? What I am saying Gentlemen, is that Daryl ain't breaking the rules. This is more of a property dispute. And Daryl, we can talk about your role in this group in the morning. We have a good thing here and I for one don't want to lose it. You're valuable, but you got to follow the rules man, ain't no other way around it."

Daryl looked up blinking away blood.

"But Daryl," Joe said evenly, "This Beth here, she's Len's now. You gotta let it go. "

It took a few more punches to subdue him.

XXXXXXX

Len was a strange cat. Long after Joe, Harley, Tony and Billy got bored and went to bed, he was still parading Beth around like she was some carnival prize at a long forgotten funfair. He gave her bizarre orders: "bring me that vase", "break that picture", "sit on the stairs". It made no sense until you realised he got off equally on the anticipation than the actual deed. He liked the power, the ability to enforce his will, to scare her with her complete lack of autonomy first before settling in to show her what he could actually do to her.

For the most part Len's show was really nothing more than childish taunts, more to piss Daryl off than anything else. Yeah, he'd eventually take it further but he had a hard on for making Daryl watch first. It was a subtlety Daryl hadn't expected. But when he'd given it a moment's thought it made some kind of sick sense.

But it had to escalate. Daryl knew that. There was no way Len would allow himself to be the brunt of any limp dick jokes if he didn't seal the deal. And frankly, there was no way he wasn't going to rape her to prove a point to her, to Daryl, to himself.

The others had left Dan both on watch and to keep an eye on Daryl but chances were that a herd could take down the house before Dan would be able to tear his gaze from Beth. He'd done little more than tie Daryl's hands and feet and pretty much left him on the couch while he got all leery watching the little spectacle Len was putting on.

It must have been around two in the morning when Len decided to rev things up a notch. He grabbed Beth around the neck and kissed her face, sloppy wet kisses that left a sheen of saliva on her skin. She recoiled and he laughed pulling out his knife and cutting her shirt off before forcing her to kiss him again, threatening to shoot Daryl in the head if she didn't make it good. She did. She came through like a fucking champ but the disgust on her face couldn't be disguised.

"Oh this ones a peach ain't she? Sweet as freshly baked apple pie," Len sniffed at her as she flinched.

Daryl shifted against his bonds.

"You want a slice of my pie Daryl?" Len asked as he wrapped a hand around her neck. "You wanna taste?"

This guy. This fucking guy.

And that was when she put a knife through Len's eye.

_(You gotta stay who you are)_

The problem was, Daryl realised later when he had a moment to think, people underestimated Beth, they always had. Sure, give her someone else's baby to raise, put her in charge of bringing up the next generation while everyone else messed about farming and running councils, but all hell broke loose if she suggested going on a run.

_"Oh she can't, what about the children."_

_"Oh she doesn't know anything about guns."_

_"She'll slow us down."_

_"She'll hold us up."_

Yeah, so let's leave her like fucking Sleeping Beauty in a fucking ivory tower. Don't sweat it, the men will save her. Caveman style.

So she was small and slight, so she was young. So goddamn what? The meek shall inherit the earth and all that.

And that's why no one thought to frisk her for weapons. Sure Len was feeling her up but from his glazed eyes and slack jaw, he wouldn't have been able to find a rocket launcher if she'd strapped one to her ass.

So truth be told Daryl hadn't been surprised when she'd pulled his hunting knife - that goddamn hunting knife he'd spent ages looking for - out of her boot and driven it hard and fast into Len's eye. He tried to scream but the sound had been cut off abruptly as she gave the blade a vicious twist and withdrew it, his blood spraying from the wound and gushing out all over her face and bra in a messy red wave.

This guy. This fucking guy.

Dan, never quick off the bat at the best of times, was still flailing around for his gun when she made it to the couch. As he stood to grab her Daryl threw his head back connecting with the cartilage in Dan's nose. More blood sprayed, a loud shriek as he lost his balance and Beth buried the knife in his chin, up through his skull.

He could already hear beds creaking upstairs as she sliced through the bonds tying his wrists and ankles.

She said his name and her voice was a little breathless. Sure it was mostly relief but there was something more, something he wasn't sure he knew how to deal with right then. Luckily, he didn't have to as he threw her his angel wing vest.

He told her they had to go and it was like they were back at the prison and he's watching her father get decapitated by a mad man. If she'd noticed, she said nothing, just looked around and grabbed Len's pack, slinging it over her shoulder and he could swear he heard her whisper "Claimed, Douchebag" as she did.

He wanted to tell her she ain't gonna find nothing good in the bag. It's Len's after all. Probably got an ant farm or a half a bottle of self tan in there, probably both, he'd seen Len claim a Barbie doll once. Guy was wack. But he didn't, just hoisted his crossbow and backpack, wincing as pain shot through his arm, and held out his hand to her. She took it and he hadn't had the time to contemplate how much he's missed this, missed her. So he didn't. He couldn't because then they'd never leave and Joe would find them in a pool of dead men's blood.

Instead, he just twined his fingers through hers as they ran to the front door, down the steps, under the chain of cutlery and hubcaps and into the woods. When he'd heard Joe, Harley, Billy and Tony behind them, he just held tighter and ran faster.

And they'd run all night. Thinking back, he doesn't know how they did it. It was dark, they slipped, they fell, they collided with low branches and tripped over exposed roots. She was exhausted, he was wounded, but they hadn't stopped, not once, not even to take a piss or a drink of water. They'd just gone for it, ignoring the scrapes and the bruises, navigating the uneven terrain trying to put as much distance as they could between them and Joe, between them and the walkers haunting the woods, between them and anyone. There were times she wanted to give up, swearing that her legs couldn't handle it any more, that she was too exhausted and even though his muscles were burning, his knees threatening to give way beneath him, he told her to shut the fuck up because there was no way on God's earth he was losing her again and he'd carry her if he fucking had to. They both knew there was no way he could do that so she just kept up.

_(Sooner or later, we always run)_

The car was a lucky break, the luckiest since the prison fell. Beth saw it in the hazy dawn light, parked next to the railway tracks. A black Yaris, small and compact, a girly car, but it had a three-quarter tank of gas and a spare key under the licence plate. And as Daryl leaned down on the accelerator he had a wild thought, a crazy, messed up thought of Hershel telling him to look after Beth, to keep his girl, their girl, safe.

He shook his head, gotta keep moving, can't let the stink of sentimentality get in your way. You just gotta go. And he went. Voices roaring in his head over the adrenalin pumping in his veins.

Sometimes the only way out of hell is through.

And through he went, the little car jerking along the gravel of the tracks, choking, grumbling and screaming its objections to his manhandling. He knew it wasn't made for this but he didn't care. He hoped the noise attracted more walkers, a whole herd of them directed at Joe. A herd that would tear them apart, destroy them the same way they'd wanted to destroy his girl.

He almost missed the road, only seeing it at the last second while swerving to miss a group of four walkers, two adults, two kids. A family group. He wondered crazily if walkers did retain memory somewhere, if somehow they stuck together in the groups they knew in life, the ones they were dimly drawn to. He shook his head. _Don't let the madness in, Dixon. Once it's in it never gets out, once it's in you start seeing chupacabras and hallucinating about missing family members and quoting books you never read._

He didn't need that now.

_Beth_ didn't need that now.

Initially he just wanted to get away, his focus completely on getting Joe off their trail, but when he hit the actual road and the car stopped wailing at him, all he wanted to do was drive until there was no more distance left to put between Beth and Joe. He knew he wasn't thinking right, they needed to find a place to stop, a place to sleep before the gas ran out. The car was a hell of a find and they'd need it again but every time he thought of slowing down, every time they passed a house that looked empty he sped up a little, telling himself just one more mile, just one more minute and they'd be safe.

He didn't know how far they drove but the gas light was blinking by the time she put a gentle hand on his arm.

"Daryl, stop," she said softly. "Stop."

It took him a moment to snap out of it, to realise what had been going on, to remember that they hadn't said two words to each other, even though it felt like they'd been speaking forever. Even though he knew it was all in his head. His questions, his confessions.

"We left them behind hours ago," her voice was steady but there was a catch in it. A catch that told him she wasn't nearly as calm as she wanted him to think. "You can't drive with that arm."

"S'fine," he mumbled as the newly remembered pain rushed to his shoulder.

"Daryl, I got this. If you want to carry on driving, let me."

"S'fine," he said again.

"Daryl, I killed two men back there. I can drive a car," her voice was sterner, agitated.

He looked at her, her bloodstained face, her bruised arms, the way his vest gaped open and the grimy bra underneath. He thought it had once been pale pink, pale pink and girly, with a smattering of polka dots and cream lace. It was just a dirty smear now, a brown mess of Len's crusted blood.

"Yeah," he said, putting his foot on the brake. "Yeah."

They swapped and she drove, slower than him, carefully, looking out for somewhere they could stop.

She asked once if he was ok and he'd grunted a response. He tried to ask where she'd been, what happened but she asked him if they could talk about it later. She was here now and that's all that mattered. And he'd said ok, that _was_ all that mattered. Ain't nothing in the world that mattered more.

It was past noon and drizzling miserably, when she found a small gated housing complex on the outskirts of some town where rich, old people went to die. He'd sat mutely by her side, trying to make sense of the day, still not believing she was here, with him, alive. He wondered if this was some kind of divine trick and she was an illusion. She was hell's real kick in the nuts.

"We can stay here," she said as the car came to a stop.

_(Maybe we can stay a while)_

He waited listening, a bird singing, the gentle pitter patter of the rain, the _gurglehiss_ of stray walkers.

Her gentle breathing over the thrum of his own heart.

The silence stretched and he turned to her.

"Beth, I…," he began not knowing where he was going or what he was going to say.

She looked at him expectantly. And her eyes were so big and so blue and so deep, that he swallowed whatever words may have come to him.

"Nothing," he said and was he dreaming again or did she look disappointed?.

And then he was all action. _Don't think, don't consider, don't be a goddamn dumbass like you were the last time, just do what you do best Dixon. Just do._ He jumped out of the car, and pulled the gate open and stabbed two lonely walkers on the drive. She drove in and turned the car 180 degrees so that they could get away quickly if they needed to and in that moment he wanted to tell her how impossibly proud of her he was. Sure, she'd killed two men, God knows how many others, she'd held her own under impossible circumstances but somehow the simple act of turning the car around spoke volumes more about her instincts for survival. Yeah, it was crazy and stupid and his priorities were really messed up but he couldn't give a rat's ass.

He bolted the gate. It wouldn't keep humans out but it'd do against walkers and maybe he could find a padlock or a chain of some kind to secure it.

She climbed out of the car and stood next to him surveying the row of houses in front of them. Eight identical white terraced houses, opening out onto an enclosed communal garden at the back. He could make out a greenish swimming pool and a set of swings, a small barbeque covered by a tattered blue and green beach umbrella.

"Which one?" she asked.

He pointed to the one closest to the gate. "This one's as good as any."

She nodded, pulling her knife out of her boot, walking up the stairs to bang loudly on the front window. They waited a minute, but the house was empty and slowly they crept inside.

It wasn't what you'd expect from houses like these. He'd thought it would have been fancier, maybe not as fancy as the ones he'd ransacked with Joe but not quite the dump it was. To be fair, it looked like it had been abandoned long before the world went to shit and never opened again until now. It smelled musty but not of death and rot and walkers which was a nice change. The only furniture was a sagging couch, an old stained mattress, a broken mirror and an ugly square black mat. Everything else from the cupboards to the grimy bathroom had been stripped, except for some plastic ice-cream tubs, which he somehow had the foresight to stick out on the windowsills to collect rainwater. Other than that there was nothing, not even an empty shampoo bottle or a tattered shower curtain.

In his periphery he noticed that she'd stopped in front of the broken mirror, eyes locked on the jagged shards that distorted her features into something monstrous and unrecognisable. If he was thinking straight he would have gone to her and pulled her away, given her a task to occupy her mind and hands.

_(We all have jobs to do)_

But he was still riding his adrenalin high, tearing around the small house, looking for something to build a barrier, a lock for the gate, anything to keep them safe. He shouted random commands at her, not really knowing what they were or why, all he knew was that he wanted them secure, her secure. She wasn't listening, he could see that her attention focused on the broken mirror, but it made him feel better to shout something, to keep them moving because he was petrified of what would happen when he stopped.

And that was when she started to sob. He wasn't sure why but he thought it had something to do with seeing her mangled image covered in blood, seeing how badly his vest covered her and understanding how this had all come to pass.

And when she said his name, he knew he couldn't ignore her, couldn't pretend she was just some girl having a meltdown. And that's when he went to her. That's how he ended up holding her tightly on the stupid square rug, how his arms had locked around her and nothing could have pulled him away. That's how he remembered how good it was to be with Beth Greene and how he'd let the whole damn world burn if it meant keeping her safe.

_(We should burn it down)_

And now? Well now, he knows the hug has gone on for much longer than appropriate, even for people trying to deal with every demon they ever had inside them. But he doesn't care. If Beth Greene needs him, that's where he is, if the gods deign that she should find comfort in him, then that's what he'll be for her. Comfort.

This is for Beth, it's only ever been for Beth.

Eventually she pulls him to the couch. It's old and broken on the one side but hell, at least it's not blue chintz. Her crying has stopped, but her face is still stained with blood and tears. He holds her, even though his arm is killing him. His vest looks ridiculous on her and probably exposes more than it covers, but he likes that she's wearing something of his so he doesn't say anything, although eventually lets go of her long enough to give her a Henley from his pack. It was once a pale blue, now it's a grimy grey but it's cleaner than anything either of them have on.

He lets her look at his shoulder after she insists. It's bruised but he can move it and she uses some of the bottled water from his pack and a rag to clean the blood off him. He does the same for her, hands shaking as he wipes her face and neck, fingertips brushing her cool skin as he reaches her delicate collarbones before handing her the rag to clean further. He looks away out of force of habit when she changes out of his vest and her bra, although he suspects that this is really nothing more than an artificial show of modesty between them and one that will soon be discarded. His shirt is ridiculously big on her and she swims in it but it's not covered in blood and the smell of himself on her does things to him he finds worrisome and exhilarating at the same time.

When she's as clean as she will be for now she moves back next to him on the couch.

She rests her head on the backrest and smiles wanly, letting out a deep sigh. And he's still not sure that she's really here, that she's back with him and he starts to worry this is a dream and he'll wake up in a cold garage with Len claiming something or other out of his pack and this whole screwed up cycle will start all over again. He has a crazy thought that maybe he died and this is the waiting room, purgatory or some shit like that. And Beth is an angel, waiting by his side until his fate is decided. He wonders how he will fare. He guesses not well. Too many failures, too many broken promises. He'll end up standing beside men like The Governor, Len … Merle. And all the good people, Hershel, T-Dog, Lori, Dale, Andrea, Sophia will be somewhere else, somewhere far away. And then soon Beth will be gone too. He's destined to lose her over and over again.

He shakes his head, his thoughts are becoming fractured and crazy even for him. He feels himself being pulled into an abyss of despair and insanity, losing his grip one finger at a time as he tries desperately to make sense of everything.

And then she's there, like a goddamn lifeline out of his mind. She takes his hand in her own, fingers twisting around his, grip tightening and it's like she's reeling him in, pulling him back to land. He looks down at their laced hands. His, dirty and clumsy covering hers, small and delicate. She's tiny and that makes him feel boorish, hulking, even though he's neither particularly tall nor broad.

"What happened Daryl? Why were you with them?" She asks and her voice is another thread to follow back to reality.

He sighs and, meeting her eyes, suddenly he can't help but think of the day he found Bob. How he'd waved away their concerns that he didn't know them, didn't know the kind of people they were. He felt that way when he met Joe. Anything to not be alone. Anyone to fill that void. He told himself that what kind of people they were didn't matter. But it does matter. Like how it matters to cover a dead woman's naked body, how it matters to write thank you notes and remember that walkers were once people, people like him. People like Beth.

He pulls out of her grasp to put his arm around her drawing her against him so that her head rests in the hollow below his shoulder. She's a perfect fit against him as she winds around him in that special Beth way, that way that makes him feel like a terrified schoolboy and the biggest badass of all time simultaneously. He wants to laugh at himself from a few months ago, the dumbass who barely managed to touch her elbow and tried so hard to stop his gaze from resting on the perfect flesh of her creamy shoulder.

He drags her closer wrapping his other arm around her, resting his chin on her head, thinking he should kiss the dirty mop of hair before realising that he already has and that her hand has slipped under the edges of his shirt, resting against the sweaty flesh of his chest. His heart is racing and he knows she can hear it.

The cat's out of the bag and he's fucked if he knows whether its an indoor or outdoor one.

"I was waiting," he says, his mouth dry.

"Waiting for what?"

"You," there's no use denying it any longer. She knows, she has to.

She does. The truth of it is in her "oh" like it was once before.

He waits. This is her chance. Her chance to untangle herself from him, from this inappropriate embrace where she's wearing no bra and a shirt so big the tiniest movement causes it to gape.

But she doesn't, she just presses harder against him, turning her face so that her cheek rests against the flesh of his chest. He thinks she might have kissed him as she moved but he's not sure.

He wants to ask her again where she's been but he doesn't want to make her uncomfortable, so he runs a hand up her arm, across her shoulder and to the back of her neck where he fingers the downy strands of hair. She sucks in a deep breath and he thinks she'll pull away, part of him wants her to pull away. But she doesn't. She touches his collar bones lightly with the tip of her index finger and his skin tightens into gooseflesh beneath her hands. He can feel the heat rising on his face as his cheeks flush and then racing downwards, a mile a minute, to his groin.

He tries to shift, conscious that he has seconds before his body's betrayal becomes plain to her, but she moves with him, oblivious of his intentions or discomfort.

He swallows, makes a show of looking out the window. It's gloomy and rainy. No change then.

"You should get some sleep," he says and even as he says it, he's wishing he hadn't because he's already anticipating the cold emptiness she'll leave behind when she goes.

"So should you."

"Saw a mattress in the spare room," he tells her but she burrows harder against him and he knows there's no way she's missed his arousal. For a second he's wildly embarrassed. The need to push her away and say something awful wrestles with his need for her to stay right where she is. But not very hard. Or very diligently.

"I'm not leaving you."

_(I won't leave you)_

"All right."

He lets go of her long enough to grab the blanket from his pack and pull it around them. It's thick and warm and she trembles against him as he covers her.

He's tired and his body, especially his shoulder, aches. But he holds her, scared that if he lets her go, she'll just be gone again. And this will all be a dream and he'll be back with Joe and Len, raiding houses and fighting a losing battle against his demons.

She shifts against him and he gasps as her head bumps against his bruises and he knows he can't do this for too much longer.

"Beth?"

"Hmmm?"

"I need to..." He makes a vague gesture at the couch, and grimaces as his muscles cramp up with the movement.

"Yeah," she says, scooting over as he lies down on his unwounded side. He waits to see if she'll balk and decide the mattress is a better idea after all but she doesn't miss a beat, stretching out next to him, pulling the blanket with her, head against his chest, legs pressed against his. He hesitates for a second not knowing where to put his hands but she snuggles again and takes his arm, draping it over her waist, lips fluttering against his skin.

He pulls her a little closer, hand splayed on the small of her back, and she looks up at him and her eyes are enormous in the gray afternoon light. He stares back, waiting. She kisses his jaw once and then his cheek. When she moves to touch her mouth to his chin, he moves with her, ever so slightly so that his lips brush hers. He can't explain it. He's already cursing himself for being such a damn fool, for pushing his luck with her, but she falls into him, allowing her mouth to linger on his, lips parting slightly before pulling away and locking that cool blue gaze on him. He stares back, afraid to move, afraid to even breathe, wishing he could find a way to keep his heart in his chest and not his throat. Wishing there was somewhere else to look other than her face, those pink lips, high cheekbones and cornflower blue eyes.

And then seemingly satisfied with what she has seen, she rests her head against his chest, planting a chaste kiss on his skin. And despite the fact that he can't hear anything but the pounding of his heart as it pounds away like a freaking jackhammer on steroids inside him, it's seconds before he's asleep.


	2. Chapter 2: Revelation

**First off, a huge thank you to everyone who bookmarked, left reviews, followed, favourited, just read it and thought "meh" or "fabulous", you guys have all been great and if I could give each one of you, your own personal Daryl Dixon or Beth Greene I would. Unfortunately, if I were to find either of them I'd have to keep them. Oh yes, also I don't own them.**

**This chapter is a little slower but when I was writing it I realised I really needed to position Beth in this story, instead of just having her there. This was my attempt at that.**

**Then my apologies if you guys received alerts twice. There was a gremlin when I posted this chapter (the gremlin was most likely me being technologically ignorant but I am going with nasty ass gremlin for now). **

**This also has a soundtrack. Once again, it won't really add or take away from anything but it's nice to have.**

**Thanks for reading and once again, any errors, let me know and I'll fix 'em.**

**Soundtrack:**

**This night - Black Lab**  
**Stay - David Gahan**  
**Bury me deep inside your heart - HIM**

* * *

She wakes up to the sound of light rain, nothing more than a miserable drizzle - the type of rain that soaks you slowly, insidiously. Not real rain then, but just wet enough to piss you off. Outside the air is hazy, the colour of overcooked meat, grey and dull and, with a start, she realises it's already dawn, a full 24 hours since she found that little car abandoned on the tracks, longer since she killed two men in cold blood. Longer still since others fell under the steel of her blade.

She shakes the thought away.

Daryl's asleep, arm tight over her, rough hand gripping her waist, flush with her skin. She pulls the blanket higher over him, happy to see that he hasn't moved, isn't sitting up, crossbow on his legs aiming at the door. It makes her sad that they've learned to sleep like that. Always alert, always ready to run, always fighting for their lives.

He moves further back into the couch, head pressing against the corner where the arm- and backrest meet. She takes the moment to study his face, the lines of stress by his eyes, the firm, hard set of his jaw, the scowl he wears even in sleep. She wants to kiss him again, feel the warmth, the wetness of his mouth, lose herself in him. Lose herself forever. Fact was he surprised her earlier when he kissed her, when her eyes fluttered closed under his clumsy embrace and she felt that searing heat rise in her chest. But then he's done nothing but surprise her since that night outside the cabin, the night that this thing - whatever it is - started burning on the ashes of his past.

It freaks her out a little that only a few short months ago she'd been so pissed that of all the people in the prison to get stuck with she'd ended up with him; emotionally stunted man-child that he was. She doesn't regret it though, not one minute of it, not one bit because she knows that without those days of sniping and snarling at each other like an old married couple, they'd never be here, not like this. Not like now.

She breathes in his scent: leather, sweat, smoke. Blood. They'll never get the stench of death out of their clothes, their heads, their lives. She doubts they even really smell most of the decay any more, it's become part of the air, part of the world. It's the one constant in this thing they call existence.

He moves against her, says something unintelligible, a rough groan, hand tightening on her, arm heavy and she allows herself a moment to relish this, to revel in his warmth, his closeness. She rests her head against him, his beating heart, his gentle breathing.

Part of her wants to go and investigate the other houses. It's obvious that this place was abandoned before everything fell apart and chances are the other homes might have more supplies. But, looking at Daryl, she doesn't want to leave him. Not yet. Oh, who is she kidding? Not ever. It's weird when you think about it, falling this hard, this fast, when you didn't even know you were falling in the first place. How was she to know? How could she have prepared? She knows the answer. She couldn't. But that's ok. She's glad. Let it happen, let it take her - them - by surprise.

She kisses his chest, the dent of his breastbone. He sighs against her, another garbled sound from his throat. She hopes the rest of his sleep has been more peaceful than this. More peaceful than hers.

She doubts it though, his sleep isn't often tranquil. They spent long enough together before for her to figure that out. He'd toss and turn, sometimes moan, often getting up before her watch was done and taking over, telling her harshly to get some shut-eye, leave him be, go dream about boys or sing or some shit. Write in that stupid-ass journal of hers. Initially she'd gone, happy to be away from the world and its horrors, happy to be away from him and his bad-tempered growls, his cruel sneers. But then everything changed.

_(You don't get to treat me like crap just because you're afraid)_

Well, nearly everything. Except the way he slept. Still fidgety, still distressed. When they'd found the funeral home he'd been slightly better. Only slightly, while he tried to stay awake, sitting on a froofy, white satin chair after gallantly telling her to take the bed. He shifted back and forth, moved his too-long legs this way and that, even dropped the crossbow once or twice. Eventually, when she realised neither of them would get any rest she'd gone to him, picked up the Stryker and told him to get in the bed. She'd used her no nonsense voice, the sternest one she had. And he'd gone, grumbling and cursing and bellyaching like an old man bitching at the neighbourhood kids to get off his lawn. But he'd gone. And when she climbed in next to him, propped up on a continental pillow, crossbow aimed at the door, he'd looked at her long and hard before rolling over to face the wall. He hadn't stayed that way long though. A few minutes and he was facing her again, reaching across the mattress to link his hand with hers. Didn't look at her as he did it, as he pulled her fingers into his, stayed focused on where their skin touched. He was matter-of-fact about it too. As if this was just the way people slept. Brush your teeth, get your jammies on, say your prayers, take Beth Greene's hand and sleep. And it hadn't been more than a minute or two before she turned to him, free hand covering their linked ones and fallen asleep too.

And then there was the next day. The day of the white dog, the day of his confessions.

The day the world proved it could still get a little darker, a little harsher.

She hasn't told him what happened. He asked before they fell asleep and she waved him away. Told him she was here now and that's all that mattered. For the moment, that's true. She'll tell him eventually, but not now. Not here, in this place where they're safe, where they've locked the demons out. She stiffens as an image of gnashing teeth flashes through her head. Gnashing teeth and blood as black as tar, barking dogs and gunshots. The panic starts to rise, a dark wave that starts in her belly and threatens to choke her from the inside out. Like it has done every night, every single goddamned night since she lost him. She gasps, squeezes her eyes shut and presses herself to him, fingers hard on his hip. His hand moves to cup her head to his chest, holding her while she trembles, while she bites her lip to stop from sobbing, until the panic ebbs and she can breathe properly. Until her muscles stop buzzing and her body goes slack. She's not sure how much he's aware of, probably not much, his breathing is regular, eyes closed, but either way she's grateful. Grateful for his closeness, his decency.

She waits, waits until she can't feel it, can't feel the sting of the past few weeks, can't hear the screams, the sound of flesh being ripped apart, bones breaking.

Waits until all she can hear is the sounds he makes, steady breaths, beating heart, the slight hitch in his throat.

When she's calm again, for now at least - she knows it won't be for long, it never is - she moves her head back to the armrest. He _is_ asleep, oblivious to the little panic attack she's just had, oblivious to the world.

_One thing at a time Beth,_ she tells herself, _one thing at a time and you'll make it. You'll get through it if you focus on one thing, the thing you need to take the next step. It's when you start thinking too far ahead, when you let the complications overwhelm you that it all goes to shit. That it all falls apart. Focus on what you need next. It worked for you before. Be logical, be practical. Be bold._

Thirsty, she disentangles herself from him, and slips across the floor to his pack, digging through it until she finds a bottle of tepid water. It tastes old and stale but they'll have more later when the ice-cream tubs are full. If they find soap, there may even be enough for a bath or at least a wipe down. The idea of being clean is as enticing as it is foreign.

She goes to the window and looks out into the haze, the fog. There's a walker inside the gate, one they must have missed when they arrived. It's only one though, nothing to worry about. They can get rid of it later. Easy. Simple. Straightforward. One thing at a time.

Across the street, there's empty fields and weak wire fences. Abandoned farmland, now dealing with the encroaching urban sprawl. She shakes her head, no actually, that's wrong. Urban sprawl is a thing of the past, dying along with most of the people on the planet. The next step is for nature to reclaim the cities. She finds the thought oddly comforting. Maybe Mother Nature will find a way of removing the blight of walkers from her pretty face.

Then again, maybe not.

Her legs cramp as she shifts to sit on the windowsill. Sore from running, from driving, from sharing a bed that isn't even a bed. A night she wouldn't trade, not for anything. She'll go back to him soon, to his arms, his embrace, but not yet, even though she misses it, she misses it so much.

She rests her forehead against the cold, clammy glass, mildly surprised by how calm she is now. Not only after what just happened but after everything. Today, yesterday, all the days since the prison fell and all the days before that. That's not to say there isn't a part of her that wants to be hysterical, to scream, cry, throw things, freak out. Part of her longs for that release, that cathartic outpouring of rage, of fear, of elation. But she holds it together. For him, she holds it together. Like he's trying to hold it together for her. But the gnawing feeling is still there and she wonders when it will chew through her defences and she'll just end up a goopy heap of tears on the ground somewhere. She wonders if Daryl will be there to pick her up again and she finds that even the vague thought that he won't is enough to choke her up. She knows she's still high from the last two days, still overwhelmed. This feeling of peace, uneasy as it may be, isn't natural. It's the calm before the storm as her Daddy used to say. She's tried to be strong, tried not to let the insanity of the last few weeks get to her. She won't have another breakdown. She won't be that girl any more.

Absently she rubs the scar on her naked wrist. Her bracelets are gone, she had to discard them but now it feels like they were taken from her, taken even though they had no value to anyone but her. But then there's a lot of stuff people have tried to take which have no value to anyone but her. She thinks of Len, his sloppy kisses, the smell of him, the way he rubbed against her. Strangely, that doesn't make her want to cry. It makes her want to resurrect him and kill him all over again. She wonders if that's real strength, or if it's bravado.

_("I wish I could just change"_

_"You did")_

A movement catches her eye, small and blurry in the bad light. It's another walker, this one stuck in the fence across the road, flailing about like a scarecrow in a wind storm. They'll kill it later, along with the one inside. One at a time. Simple. Easy. Straightforward.

Over her shoulder Daryl sleeps, lying on his side, arms in front of his face, knees drawn up. Always defensive, always ready. Beth sighs. It wasn't meant to be like this. None of it was meant to be like this.

_(That's how unbelievably stupid I am)_

She longs for the prison, for her father, for Maggie, Glenn, baby Judith. They had found a kind of peace there, a solitude they won't get again. Life just doesn't give out second chances, not like that. Not any more.

_You've got to look after what you have, otherwise you lose it. You lose it and you don't get it back._ And yet, watching him, she knows that she has got something back. It may not be perfect, it may not be everything, but it may be the only thing she ever gets back in this nasty world they live in. It's enough. He's enough.

She takes another sip of water before screwing the cap back on the bottle and returning it to his pack. You don't leave your stuff out any more. You've got to be able to up and run at a moment's notice.

_(Beth, get your shit!)_

The memory kills her. How eager he was to rush into the lion's den, how automatic it was for him to want to sacrifice himself. Did he love her then, she wonders. Did he love her when he saved her? Did he love her when he risked everything for her? Or was that something he'd have done for anyone? For everyone? She doesn't know. She wants to believe it was her, but she doesn't want to lose who he is. The determination, the dedication, the devotion that makes Daryl Dixon Daryl Dixon. She wonders if he knows he loves her. If he understands what she hears when they speak. If he knows what he is actually saying to her. She thinks he does, even if he doesn't have the words.

The question is does she have the words? Is there any use for words of love in this new world? She thinks of Glenn and Maggie and decides there is. There has to be.

He shifts under the blanket and she knows he'll wake soon. She wants to be there when he does. She wants to be there for him for as long as this evil world allows them to live.

This man. This crazy, broken, beautiful, ridiculous, frightening, fucked up man.

Thing was once you got through all the bullshit, the anger, the self loathing he's remarkably easy to love.

Easy to love. She rolls that phrase over in her head. Is that was he is? What she is? She doesn't know. She's never loved before. Maybe he hasn't either.

When she was younger and boys were just starting to register on the Beth Greene radar, the pretty little Southern belle with the voice of an angel, she thought that falling in love would be like an earthquake or a tornado. She longed for the day that she'd feel the earth move, rock her world, change the course of her existence. Well, the last part is right at least. The world has changed but that has nothing to do with being in love. But when she thinks of how she feels right now, in this moment, in this abandoned house with him, she's grateful that love didn't come like a natural disaster. Loving him is soothing, even if nothing else about him is.

"Beth?" his voice is raw, low.

She turns to look at the couch. He's frowning ... confused, spooked.

"Yeah, I'm here," she says going back to his side and sitting in the curve of his body.

"Ok?" he asks.

"Yeah, just thirsty," she says. "How's your arm?"

He grimaces and rolls onto his back, "Feels like it's been hit with a tyre iron."

She smiles and puts a hand on his shoulder. She's been trying not to think too much about the previous day, trying not to let the million possible scenarios of how everything could have gone down get to her too much. It's part of that irrational calm, that denial of the chewing panic. She'd given herself permission to cry earlier, when he held her like she was the only person left on earth, and that's done now. She won't be scared for the rest of her life, she won't let herself sink into despair, especially when against all odds they were together again. He's here, bruised, scarred. But he's here.

She shivers.

He opens the blanket.

"Come on," his voice is a little strained and she hesitates. Briefly, there's something in his eyes that looks like hurt. She doesn't understand it at first, it confuses her, throws her off. That quick frown, the hard line of his mouth.

She knows that look.

_(Is that what you think of me?)_

And then she gets it. She gets him. She knows how he feels about her. He's been obvious, hasn't tried to hide it. But he's Daryl and despite the fact that he sees things others don't, she knows that until the words are out of her mouth he won't give himself permission to even imagine his feelings are reciprocated. She forgets that he can't look into head, into her heart.

And now, he's trying to see himself through her eyes again and her hesitation is a sign, a sign of discomfort, lack of trust. Despite the kiss from earlier, the sleeping together, the openness, he still can't find it in himself to believe in her, to believe in them. Part of her wants to laugh at how wrong he is, but she's not stupid. Daryl is what the world has made him, Daryl is who he has to be to survive and somehow over time, that's eroded his self-esteem, his confidence.

Wounded, he drops the blanket.

She leans forward and touches his cheek gently with her fingertips, a silent apology. He flinches, flinches like she's hit him.

"Don't," she tells him running her hand through his dirty hair, brushing it away from his eyes, letting her fingers trail across his forehead, tracing around an ugly bruise left by one of those assholes he was running with. Running with while he waited for her, running with to fill the loneliness. She wonders if he thought about her while she was gone. If she was in his head and heart when he laid down to sleep at night? When he was surrounded by those yahoos who thought he was like them. Or did he push her away? Pretend she didn't exist and make himself numb enough to follow the only people he could find?

He breaks her heart. He always has. Even before. He's like a beaten dog. Eager to please, eager to love, but so quick to fall back into bad habits, so eager to go to the first person who offers him a bone and bite anyone who'd give him something better.

"I'm glad I'm here," she says.

He swallows and he covers her hand with his, stops her stroking his hair.

"With you," she adds. Just to be sure. Just so he can be sure.

She holds his gaze, doesn't shy away, doesn't let him shy away. His thumb brushes against the hollow of her wrist.

He makes a noise in the back of his throat, a gruff rumble of understanding and surprise.

_(Oh)_

It's another of those moments, those moments they've become so good at. Those moments that last forever and ever and ever. And she can't, just can't any more. So she doesn't. Doesn't wait, doesn't think, doesn't stop and kisses him again, letting her tongue brush across his closed lips. He jerks, fingers flexing at his sides.

She sits back looking at him.

"Beth," his voice is strangled and he's moving to sit up but she puts a hand on his chest, pushing him back into the couch.

"Stop," she whispers but she's not sure if she's asking him not to speak or not to move. "Just … stop."

He stills and she makes a decision. Maybe it's because she's looking for a way to channel the latent hysteria, an outlet, a release. Maybe it's because she doesn't know what today will bring and lost opportunities erode the soul. Maybe she's still reeling from the events of today. Maybe it's just because it's him and she's not the blushing virgin everyone thinks she is.

Yeah. Daryl Dixon. She's noticed. Beth Greene sure as hell has noticed.

She lifts the blanket and settles next to him again, into the curve of his arm, head against his shoulder. He shifts onto his side making room for her. The skin of his neck, shoulder, turns to gooseflesh under her breath and he lowers his palm to her hip, no prompting this time, no stiff fingers, no fluttering hands.

She can hear his heart, wonders briefly if he can hear hers, then stops caring as she looks up at him. At his blue eyes, the scepticism written on his face.

_(You gotta put it away … here)_

She runs her finger down his cheek, thumb resting on the corner of his lips. Her kiss is chaste, at first, but this time he opens his mouth to her, responding to the wet stroke of her tongue. He tastes faintly of cigarettes and a lot like blood.

He tastes like a man, not a boy, not a stolen encounter behind her Daddy's barn, not a steamy session in a cold prison cell with a soon-to-be-dead lover. A man who's lived in this world and become part of it. A man dirty, hard, tainted with the decay of it and the world before it.

Even so, him and his kisses are awkward, deliberate, wary. But he's also soft, slow, unconsciously deft of hand and mouth as his lips find their way to her neck. She wonders if he's been faking all this time, if he's more experienced than his thorniness has let on. But she doesn't think so. He's no Don Juan, no Lothario. He's just Daryl Dixon and his hot, wet, open-mouthed kisses, thrilling as they may be, show he's nervous as all fuck.

It makes her want to soothe him, tell him it's ok, that this is exactly what she wants, but under the searing heat of his mouth, she doesn't trust herself with words, doesn't think she remembers any, if she ever knew any to start off with.

She's not sure what she's doing when she puts her palm against his neck, where his skin is clammy despite the coolness of the morning, and then runs it over his shoulder, down his arm, to his knuckles where she interlaces their fingers over her hip. But it makes him lean into her, shift his attention from her neck to her clavicles and then up to her cheek.

He's eager now and she lets him press against her, feels his belly against hers, muscles toughened and moulded by a world too harsh to live in, the hardness of his cock against her thigh.

He's perfect in his own weathered way. Perfect in his tenderness. She stifles a smile at the thought. Who would have imagined that it would come to this? Her and him? The Disney princess and the redneck Robin Hood. It's like a subverted _Snow White_, a twisted fairytale with teeth that'll eat you up and spit out the bones if you think on it too long.

He kisses her lips again, long and deep and hard, hand sliding up between them to cup her cheek, tangle in her greasy hair. She can't remember when she last washed it but he doesn't seem to care, so she decides she doesn't either.

"Missed you," he whispers. "Missed your sass girl."

She loves him fully in that moment. The feeling comes fast, unexpectedly, a swelling in her chest as her heart seems to burst. She's told herself she doesn't cry any more about the people she loses. But looking at Daryl half hovering above her in the morning light, she knows she'll cry when she loses him again. She hopes she'll go first.

It's almost certain she will.

_(You'll be the last man standing)_

He kisses her again, one last time, before bowing his head to her shoulder and then drawing away to lie down again, arms tight around her. Her body feels liquid and boneless and she thinks if he lets her go she'll just fall into the floor, become one with the house, a stain on the ugly black rug that no sane person would ever have spent actual money on. She touches his hip, holds it.

There's a part of her that's disappointed. Disappointed but relieved. She'd gone into this hoping for more, visions of sweaty, dirty sex clouding her brain but now she feels no reason to press any further, no reason to rush. They're safe, he's safe. It might be the end of the world but this? This is the start of something wonderful, the start of something good and pure and perfect and she's not going to push that, not going to push him.

One thing at a time.

They have all the time this no good world is prepared to give them.


	3. Chapter 3: Genesis

**Apologies for the long wait, I had an unexpected and very difficult houseguest (whose biggest issue in life was rationing my soap, ****_my soap_****, that I buy - I'm not even kidding) and then I had numerous pet-related emergencies. I'd also really rather take a little longer and make things as good as I can instead of giving you guys something I am unhappy with.**

**Thanks to everyone who is reading, who is commenting, following, favouriting, bookmarking and lurking. You guys have no idea how much your support means to me. No idea. This fandom is pretty incredible. And the people on this ship are amazing.**

**I hope you like this chapter, it wasn't an easy one to write on account of me still trying to set the scene and get inside Daryl's head (what a maze).**

**Please let me know if you find mistakes.**

**Soundtrack for those who are interested: **

**She is the Sunlight - Trading Yesterday (this is like my number one Bethyl song, the feeeels just kill me)**

**Angel - Aerosmith**

**Something I can never have - Nine Inch Nails**

**Butterfly on a wheel - The Mission**

**Into my arms - Nick Cave**

* * *

He doesn't feel her slip out of his arms, doesn't feel her go. Later he wonders how he missed it, how someone who sleeps as lightly as he does didn't notice her up and leave. He remembers how she kissed him though, how she'd fitted to his body so perfectly even though she's so small and he's clumsy and crude and all thumbs. He remembers how he'd kissed her mouth, her cheek, how his lips travelled down her neck, how he could taste the dirt - the sweat - of her under his tongue.

But he also remembers the voices in his head, how they raged and laughed - a maddening cacophony that drowned out everything, making Beth and her sweet kisses and her soft skin into a minefield of twisted emotions and blackened morality under his hands.

They'd been fine to start off with. Usually, the voices came and went, depending on the mood or as Joe would have said "the general attitude of the day". Always a little crazy, some recognisable like his ma and old man, Grandma Lila. Others less distinct, an amalgamation of school bullies, pretty girls and redneck douchebags he used to know. He'd been teased and tormented long enough to know how to ignore them. And it wasn't like he actually believed he had people living in his head. In the cold light of day he knew that it was him. All his demons. All his fears. All his insecurities.

All him.

But there was a wildcard.

_Isn't there always?_

Because just when he managed to drown them out, just when he'd shut them up long enough to think, to breathe, to feel, just when he thought he was out of the woods and maybe, just maybe he could go on kissing Beth for a little longer, a few seconds maybe. An hour. The next century would do as well. He ain't fussy. That was when the big guns came out.

Merle.

Always fucking Merle

His crazy-ass brother's voice lived in his head now too. Had since the day he'd found him turned, gorging on the guts of the dead. Had long before that too, if he was brutally honest with himself.

But he wasn't. And he liked that just fine that way, thank you very much.

Because as much as he wanted, no, _needed_, to deny it, one way or another Merle was his personal reckoning, the bogeyman hiding in the closet just when the movie should be over.

The problem was it was Merle, not an unfriendly monster, not one that was likely to bite or claw or drag you back under the bed, leaving nothing but some bloodied fingernail marks on the floor. No, he was subtler than that. The devil on your shoulder, the one who sucked you in, who seduced you to come over to the dark side, who promised a twisted salvation where you could have peace, where you could revel in the depravity.

The one that told you fucking Beth Greene was the best idea ever and exactly what you should do.

Which automatically made it into the last thing you should do.

It was a fine line to walk and Daryl often found himself stumbling. Didn't want to be his brother but making every moral question into a case of "What Would Merle Do?" made it hard to see things clearly. Because Merle would have fucked Beth. There and then. Hard and fast. Swift and sure. Wouldn't have thought twice about it.

And if he would have done it, it was probably a bad idea.

A very bad idea.

He thinks of his Ma. He shouldn't, but he does and it bothers him that she's been popping up in his mind so often. She once told him something about fighting monsters and not becoming one yourself. Also something about an abyss but he can't really remember all too well. He hated those days when she started quoting books and famous people and talking about the world outside of the Dixon trailer. Hated them because it always jolted him, threw him off when he remembered that his Ma hadn't always been like this. Hadn't always been a shadow, hadn't always been dead inside. That she'd had a chance at a different life and bad choices and worse circumstances had taken that all away from her. Taken it and thrown it into that abyss of cigarettes and booze and pills.

_It was a very clever man that said it, Daryl. That stuff about monsters. Cleverer than me, _she said, _much cleverer than your dad. But not cleverer than you, my boy. Nowhere near. _

His Ma's grasp on reality had always been questionable. Very questionable.

He recalls the day perfectly, her bruised arms, the scratches on her cheek, his old man snoring away a drunken stupor on the couch. He'd been so angry, so enraged when he saw her battered shoulders that his ten-year-old self hadn't stopped to think. Her bruises were all there was, they filled his entire world with their sickly purple hue and he'd run to the kitchen drawer, pulled out the sharpest knife he could find - now that he thinks on it, the knife probably wasn't that sharp (nothing in the Dixon household actually worked) - and was halfway across the room before his Ma grabbed him, pulled him to her breast and rocked him while he cried against her stained nightgown that reeked of cigarettes and sweat. And that's when she told him, when she whispered to him that he had to be the one good thing she'd done in the world. Told him it was too late for her, for Merle, but maybe it wasn't too late for him. And she couldn't - _she wouldn't_ - let her little boy, her sweet son turn into a monster. She just wouldn't. She would keep him pure, flawless.

Even then he knew she was talking trash, one too many sleeping pills, mixed with one too many painkillers, mixed with one too many bottles of Jim Beam. She could think he was different all she wanted but this was him, this was Daryl Dixon. He had Dixon blood. Tainted Dixon blood. It was as much a part of him as breathing. The only difference between him and Merle, him and his father was a few years. A decade or two down the line and that's where he'd be. On the couch, sleeping off a high. Maybe even a battered woman crying over him like his Ma was now.

But she'd asked him to promise her he wouldn't give in, wouldn't give up his goodness and he'd said yes to stop her crying, even though he didn't really believe it. Couldn't really believe it. It was like telling him to become president or find a cure for cancer. Telling him he'd be a millionaire and stop human trafficking while saving stray dogs off the street in his spare time. Impossible nonsense.

Impossible.

Nonsense.

But the truth of it was he tried. Every goddamned day he tried. He wasn't Merle. If nothing else good came out of the last two or three years, it was that. But every now and then, when he felt his worst, when it seemed like the world was shitting on his head just because it could and that he was cursed, he felt like he was being pulled into that abyss. And that he was going to take everything close to him along for the ride.

Everything. Like Beth Greene.

Beth Greene who'd kissed him, slipped under the blanket with him and moulded herself around him, pulling him to her. Beth Greene who'd let him kiss her, let him put his clumsy hands on her, who chased most of the voices away with the sweetness of her mouth, the softness of her body.

He wonders now if she'd been as buzzed as he was, if she also felt like her heart was going to jump out of her chest, if even the smallest sliver of her was scared of rejection.

Beth wasn't the type of girl who got rejected.

Since when did the fucking prom queen get turned down by the likes of well, him? He thinks briefly of Junie Day prom queen circa 1991 when he would have graduated - if he had graduated - thinks of her red hair and her green eyes and how they'd been friends once upon a time, before her family suddenly came into a lot of money, a _lot_ of money, and they moved out of the trailer park and into Roswell and suddenly Daryl Dixon wasn't good enough to lick her boots. He's mostly over it now. Mostly. Couldn't blame the girl, not really. If he'd had the opportunity to leave he would have, but he liked to think he wouldn't have left everyone else behind. Liked the think that if he saw Junie Day and her family out one day he'd have stopped to say hi instead of pretending he didn't know them, like Junie did that day him and Merle had seen her in the Atlanta city centre, looking like she'd just stepped out of the pages of a fashion catalogue. He wonders where Junie is now. Last time he heard of her was a decade ago and she was getting married to some fancy pants lawyer. He wonders if she made it out before the virus hit, if she found some kind of safe zone or if she's holed up in a house somewhere like this one, waiting for it all to be over. Of course, there's always the possibility that she's a geek, a biter, a walker.

He shakes his head. No. He hopes Junie made it. Despite how she treated him, despite her unkind words the last time they spoke when she told him that redneck trash was her past now and how sick she was of him pining after her like a lost puppy. Merle had laughed when he heard, thought it was hilarious. Told him even white trash like the Days have standards, don't want nothing to do with the Dixons. Don't want Daryl Dixon sniffing around their redneck princess. Asked him how he could have been so fucking stupid as to think Junie Day, even at her worst when she was begging stale bread off his Ma while his old man was out, would have ever looked at him twice. _Aim high_, he'd said sarcastically before laughing hysterically again. _Aim as fucking high as you can brother, ain't no way that could ever work out badly for you_.

And that's what he heard Merle say when the rest of the voices were drowned out. _Aim high. Aim as fucking high as you can brother_. _Sure, Dixons don't get the homecoming queen, they don't get the prettiest girl in the room. It's just all a big joke. So if this cute little piece of ass is giving it away for free, ain't no reason to say no. Ain't no reason not to make her beg for it. Give it to her brother, give it to her hard, give it to her good._

That's what he heard when he'd kissed her before they slept, when he'd woken up and invited her back under the blanket, when he moved his lips to her smooth neck, it was all there. That brash laugh, a leer so loud he could almost hear it. And he had to stop. Even though he really didn't want to, even though he didn't think she wanted him to. Even though he felt like he was dying when he moved off her and locking his arms around her was all he could do not to touch the rest of her, not to even think of putting his hands on her skin, her flesh, those meagre curves that were impossible not to notice.

She'd been sweet though, snuggling against him, and soon there was just white noise in his head, nothing serious, nothing he couldn't handle. He didn't know what to say, so he'd just held her, held her while he could still taste her on his tongue, while she ran gentle fingers through his hair, as the sweaty smell of her - of them - filled him and for the first time in weeks, for the first time since the funeral home, he felt himself relax. Maybe a little too well. Because he fell asleep again and when he woke up she was gone.

"Beth?" he calls as he shifts on the couch.

His shoulder jars as he sits up and it's like an alarm for every other bruise, muscle and scab to wake up and stand to attention. He winces, closing his eyes briefly against the pain, putting a hand to his belly. They'd got him better than he thought, much better actually.

He thinks of looking in the mirror and then remembers how much the jagged image freaked Beth out and decides against it. Won't be much to see, just an asshole redneck looking like he'd been in a bar fight. It was a reflection he'd seen often enough before anyway. Didn't need no reminders.

He calls her name again as he pulls his boots on, but the house is silent. And he starts to worry a little. He's come down from the adrenalin high. He's not thinking about hell and angels and purgatory and infernos and shit. It takes him a second to comprehend exactly how out of his mind he had been the previous night, exactly how far into Crazytown he'd gone.

(Briefly, he wonders how far into Crazytown she'd gone and if that's why she'd kissed him.)

But now, it's better, he knows he's not dreaming, well at least as much as anyone ever knows they ain't dreaming. Yeah, yeah, he's done the whole "what if I'm in a coma and this is just a long extended little mind adventure before I check out". If it is he wishes the doctor would change his meds because it's been one hell of a trip and he could easily do with a change to kittens and rainbows for the rest of his life. But he knows this is as real as he's going to get for now. And he knows Beth is here somewhere, can still smell her on his hands, wishes he could still have her taste in his mouth.

Standing brings a whole new level of pain. His muscles bunch and cramp, his legs buckle even though they feel like they're in a vice and he has to grab onto the couch for a moment to stop himself falling over. His shoulder feels like a demon from that ninth circle he was so worried about has managed to claw its way into his flesh and follow him out of hell as his own little personal reminder of just how fucking close they came.

How fucking close.

Funny what fear can do, how it can push you, how it can override basic needs, basic human endurance and keep you moving through it.

He's still in shock though. The previous night and all its horrors still lurk close to the surface and no amount of endorphin-fuelled emotion will quiet them. He needs time, that's all. Time with her, time to "reflect" as Joe said. Time to get used to the idea of not being alone and having someone he can trust nearby.

Another groan as he takes the crossbow and opens the front door, walks down the steps. Stands in the rain outside, blinking stupidly in the bad light. This weather is fucked up. Makes no sense to him any more, but then again a little bit of wacky weather is nothing compared to the fact that dead people are walking around.

Yeah, when you think about it that way, it puts a lot of things into perspective.

He scans the drive, noticing again how identical the houses all are save for different colour flower boxes outside each. The two walkers he killed from the previous day are still lying next to the gate but there's another one now. A middle-aged man, dressed in a suit lying near the car. He knows he didn't kill that one and he starts to panic. His empty stomach lurches - they really should have cleaned this place out better. They really had been idiots. Wild, high idiots thinking themselves untouchable in a world like this.

"Beth?" he calls, "Beth?"

It's cold, really fucking cold all of a sudden. She couldn't have gone far, ain't no way she would have run off on him, run off without him.

_Yeah, like Junie Day_. That was Merle's voice, his stupid-ass voice.

He calls again, trying to keep the panic at bay, telling himself that she's fine, she hasn't disappeared.

_(Wouldn't kill you to have a little faith)_

But he's worried. Really fucking worried because he knows his mind ain't right and he knows he's not all that sharp right now and he doesn't think he can take another round of God and his cosmic pranks that he likes to play on Daryl Dixon for shits and giggles.

"Fuck Beth!" He calls. "You here girl?"

Silence. Silence except for the pitter patter of rain, the hush of the wind.

This ain't right, he tells himself, this just ain't right. He did this once before. Ran all night for her before collapsing on the side of the tracks. But this time he has nothing, nowhere to go, nothing to follow.

He shouts again no longer caring if there's anyone, walker or not, to hear, and just when he thinks that's it and he's about to fall down in the rain only to look up to see Joe and Len admiring his crossbow, the door of the house next door opens and she's there. Wrapped in a short blue robe, hair wet, droplets of icy water falling off her skin.

He blinks.

She grins.

He tries to grin back but his heart doesn't stop its rapid-fire thumping and for a second he thinks he's going nuts and this is Merle in the woods all over again.

"Come on," she says. "It's freezing out here."

His voice is gone, so he does what she says because it's easier than trying to explain anything or scold her for running off or hell, confess his love. Yeah, he doesn't know where that last one came from. Except, you know, he does.

"I thought whoever lived there had moved," she says indicating the other house and he's starting to think she's real again. "This place has much more stuff."

He's not sure what counts as stuff but she's fine and that right there is a win. That robe though, he's not sure if that's a win or a one way ticket to hell and his gut clenches a little.

The house is identical to the last one - kitchen, lounge and dining room downstairs and three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. But it's furnished in a kind of retro 1970s style that includes a wall mural of spirographs next to pinups of girls in poodle skirts ironing and serving beer and playing with cats. If there's a seventies version of a dudebro, he lived here once upon a time. He can't quite figure it out but then he's really never understood people with money.

He looks at the pictures on the mantle above a dusty fireplace. A middle-aged couple. He has a ponytail and a huge handlebar mustache while she is pretty and heavily made up with big eighties hair. They're on a boat obviously somewhere on holiday, drinking rum. A photo from before, a happier time. He wonders why they moved on from here until he sees another photo of a young woman, a carbon copy of both of them wearing a Mercer University Bears jersey and it all falls into place.

There might be no bodies here, no walkers, but suddenly the house reeks of death.

He knows she's watching him as he takes it all in, as he looks around at the over the top furnishing, the lava lamps, the retro brown and yellow striped couch, as his gaze travels to the kitchen and the avocado green grocery cupboards in it. And he's acutely aware that she's standing very close and that her robe is very short.

He clears his throat and looks at her.

"Did you have a bath?" He asks and it's stupid, irrelevant and totally not what he wanted to say because what the hell do you say now, the morning after the night before?

She grins again.

"They have a well-point. Water's cold and there's no pressure but it's water and it's clean."

So much for his brilliant ice-cream tub plan.

"And they have a gas stove." She continues. "With gas."

"All these places?" he asks and she shrugs.

"Only looked at this one."

"Wonder why that other one was such a dump?"

She shrugs again.

He humphs.

He feels weird, jangly. She's smiling and upbeat and he thinks he should say something, anything. But she's in that little blue robe and he doesn't want to look at her too long.

"There was a walker outside," he says because he can't think of anything else and his mind is wandering to very dark places as he remembers her lips on his and the feel of her skin under his hands.

"Oh," she doesn't seem worried. "I killed it earlier, it must have been behind the houses when we arrived last night."

"Yeah, well we'll need to clear this place good and proper."

She nods and looks a lot less serious than she should.

"I found some food here. Some tinned peaches and pie apples. And a can of condensed milk."

"Make us sick," he says but his stomach rumbles loudly and he goes into the kitchen to where she's laid the cans out on the counter, picking them up and pretending to read the labels.

"Your shoulder ok?" She asks from the doorway and he makes a noise that means "yes" and "stop fussing" at the same time.

He chances a peek at her and that little robe that barely touches her thighs makes his breath hitch.

He looks away when she catches his gaze.

"It's ok Daryl," she says and it feels like she is humouring him and he's embarrassed.

He makes that noise again and takes a swig of the condensed milk directly from the tin, messing down his front, staining over the blood already there. It's ridiculously sweet, like drinking melted sugar and his empty stomach lurches.

She frowns and it's the same look she gave him at the funeral home.

"Gross."

And because he doesn't know what else to do, he grins at her.

She rolls her eyes and he's about to chuckle when she rubs her shoulder, the robe falling open slightly. There are dark bruises against her pale skin, so dark that he doesn't understand how he didn't see them last night when all she wore was his vest. Maybe he was still too buzzed, maybe he was still too focused on the fact that she was here and alive and it was a miracle the likes of which no one in the Dixon family has ever seen before nor likely would see again.

But there they are, big and black and blue, a line of them running across her shoulder and into her hairline. His gaze drops to her arm. Len's handprint stands out raw and red above her elbow, another one on her wrist.

He hates it. It makes him think of his Ma. Again. And he _really _doesn't want to keep thinking about his Ma ... and how her shoulders and arms were always covered in purple bruises. His old man was nothing if not strategic, precise. Never bruised where you couldn't cover up. Was why he'd see his Ma in turtle neck jumpers in the middle of the Georgia summer. She claimed she was just a cold person. Fact was she was just a beat person, a punching bag. Old man Dixon was very clever, knew where the pressure points were, knew how to hit where it did the most damage. And sometimes, when he was looking for a fight, when he was so drunk and so high he'd prepare beforehand. Was like watching a fucking horror movie unfold in front of him.

It would always start slow, slow and easy.

The old man would be in a good mood, riding out his high, humming to himself under his breath, reading the papers, smoking a cigarette.

"Hey Daryl, pass me that soap."

That was when he knew, it was always the goddamn soap. Daddy Dixon was completely on board with the old soap in a sock cliche. Loved it like he loved his Jack, like he loved his whores, like he loved jerking off to violent porn and kicking the neighbour's dog when they weren't looking.

Thing was, Daddy Dixon was also very clever. Daryl had never been his favourite. He'd always called him a "Mama's boy", a "sissy", "a crying pansy ass little bitch". Always felt Daryl was too sensitive, too nervous. Stupid fucking thing was it was his old man that put him on edge, his old man that made him fearful and timid. And his old man's answer? Beat the fear out of him. As if that made sense. Fact was, it didn't beat the fear out of him, it beat it into him time and time again. All it taught him to do was hide it. Be the first to lash out rather than the one to be lashed at.

But the soap, the soap was always the easiest way to turn Daryl into the exact jangle of nerves, crying little bitch that his father said he was, because the soap in his young child mind made him complicit in whatever was going to happen. He helped create the weapon that was used to beat his mother. And that was something Daryl Dixon carried around with him that he'd never told anyone in his life. Didn't think he ever would because once he started thinking about it the guilt was too much. Too crippling. In moments of clarity, he knew that his feelings were unfounded, that he had been a kid and his father hadn't needed an excuse to give him a beating, so defying a simple request like "pass the soap", even though it was loaded with everything that made life in the Dixon home a living hell, would be enough to stop him sitting for days.

But that didn't change the fact that when he passed the soap - "always the new bar Daryl, we don't want the one that's already been in the shower" - it felt like putting a gun in his father's hands and aiming it for him.

The worst bit though, well other than the inevitable beating that would follow when he'd go and huddle in his cupboard a pillow over his ears, was the half smile and the conspirational wink his father would give him as that bar of antibacterial soap passed between them. Sometimes if he was feeling extra sadistic, he'd hold the sock open. Make Daryl push the soap inside. To this day he can't stand to look at Dial in the supermarket, can't stand anything that smells even close to it.

Because he doesn't see soap. He sees guilt. He sees bruises.

Bruises like Beth has all over her arms and neck. And it makes him just a little bit crazier than before.

She's ok though. He thinks at least. She has to be. He has to tell himself she is or he might just lose all his shit and then she won't be ok again.

"What?" she asks.

He doesn't miss how her breath hitches as he tugs at the collar of her robe, nor how her skin prickles as he lays his fingers on her shoulder just below the blackest of the bruises.

"You ok?" he asks.

She nods. "It's just bruises, Daryl, they'll heal."

He doesn't like that phrasing, sounds too much like something his Ma would have said.

He clears his throat, briefly looks into her eyes, big and beautiful and cobalt blue.

"I want to kill him for you again," he says, voice low, gruff, the words indistinct like he's telling her a huge secret.

"He's dead," she says, reaching for his free hand with her own and twining his fingers through hers.

He nods, thumb tracing the edge of the marks. Her skin is soft, softer than last night and he suddenly wants to put his mouth to it. Plant a chain of healing kisses over those brazen bruises, those obscene reminders. He wants to see them disappear like butterflies under his lips, see her skin go pale under his hands. He wishes he had the power to make it all go away, to change everything that's happened to her, to them.

Her hand closes around his wrist and he looks away from her shoulder, her marks, her scars, to her face where her lips are slightly parted and her eyes are almost luminous.

She says his name and steps towards him as his hand slides to the back of her neck, where her skin is cold and damp from her hair.

He wants to kiss her again, like he did last night, wants to feel her lips against his, her tongue in his mouth. Even though he knows it's all kinds of wrong.

He's ok with being wrong.

But then she falters. A brief look to the side, a small bite on her bottom lip. And then she slips her arms around him, under his jacket, against his dirty shirt, fitting her head to his shoulder. He takes a moment with the disappointment before holding her too him, pressing her to his chest, breathing in that clean scent that's anything but Dial, hands splayed on her back. She's tiny, tiny and perfect and even though she's not wearing much, she warms him and he knows he could stand like this forever. And that he could even find that latent religion hidden inside his genes and start thanking a higher power for every second he gets to stay.

"I missed you so much Daryl Dixon," she says against him. "I think I missed you more than you missed me."

He snorts and touches his lips to her hair.

"Ain't no way Beth. Ain't no fucking way."

**xxx**

"There's coffee," she calls as he emerges from the bathroom later, dripping and cold but clean for what feels like the first time in forever.

He makes a sound in the back of his throat that means yes, thank you and something else he's not sure of all at once.

She's found clothes for him. Dark jeans, some fancy-ass brand he could have never afforded in the old world, a black, long-sleeved vest, and a fleece-lined jacket, which she tells him is called "The Sheep" and he chuckles thinking that at least it's not bell bottoms and platform boots which is what he would have expected from Mr and Mrs '70s Dudebro. Either way, it's better clothes than he's seen in years and they all fit well enough, maybe a little loose, a little baggy. He's thinner than he was before, no more room to store those extra cookies, no more fleshy belly.

She's standing by the window looking across the courtyard into the street when he comes down the stairs.

She's found clothes for herself too. Dark skinny jeans that cling to her, a loose turquoise vest. A grey hoodie lies on the couch, and her bra, wet but still stained with Len's blood is hanging over a cold radiator. He doesn't ask why she didn't raid some of the underwear here. If there's one thing Daryl Dixon knows about women it's that the sizes on those things are confusing as all fuck.

She's set some of the tins on a small side table along with a cup of coffee. Black and bitter and he wonders how she knew how he drinks it.

He sits on the couch eating some of the apples, the condensed milk was too much for him. Except for chocolate chip cookies, he never had much of a sweet tooth, never developed a taste for it on account of his father spending all their money on getting high. All things considered he's surprised he'd ever developed a taste for anything because truth was there never actually was much in the way of food around.

Beth nurses a mug of tea in her hands, looking across the street.

"We need to get that walker stuck in the fence," she tells him.

"Do it later," he puts the apples on a side table. "Come sit here."

He pats the couch and she turns from the window and shifts down next to him.

"You look different with no dirt on," she teases.

He frowns. "Yeah. Drink your tea."

"Should check out the other houses," she says, curling her legs up under her. "See if we can find anything useful. Place seems pretty untouched."

"Yeah," he agrees.

She moves again and he catches sight of her ankle, fading bruises, a slight swell she doesn't even seem to be aware of.

"How is it?" he indicates her foot when she looks confused.

"Oh it's fine. Much better."

He frowns, chewing on his thumb.

She sighs, stretching her leg out and into his lap. "Go on then,"

Her ankle is so delicate that his hand almost goes right around it as he grips it. She wiggles her toes, now bright with some glimmering pink nailpolish and he gives her what he hopes is a mock-annoyed look. Trust Beth Greene to ferret out a pot of nailpolish in a world gone to shit.

It's hilarious but doesn't say anything.

Instead, he's businesslike as he touches it, pulling her foot further into his lap and pushing the jeans up a smidgen so he can see properly, trying not to let his fingertips trail too far up her leg. She's right, it really is much better now. He studies it, moves it gently, presses on it again, two fingers in the hollow above her heel. He chews on his bottom lip, eyes narrowing as he touches her toes. She breathes in sharply and he wants to ask if it hurts, if she can tell whether it's the muscle or the bone or maybe just bruises, if she's had any trouble walking, if she knows she needs to tell him if anything feels different. Bear traps are dangerous and dirty and he doesn't want her to get an infection, even if it's looking ok now, she needs to be careful, she has to be able to run and even the slightest twinge could be a problem and has she thought that maybe she should bandage…

"If I'd known you had a thing about ankles I woulda taken my socks off last night."

Her voice isn't loud but for a moment it's the only sound in the world. She's mainly confident, a slight tease in her tone but even so he can hear a waver in the words and his hands go still on her.

He might have been thinking about the latter part of last night more than he should but he also hasn't forgotten how she cried into his shirt, how she held onto him, rattling and trembling against his chest. Neither has she, but he knows they're both covering now. Not ready to talk about Len and Joe and before and after and the couch and the kisses. It's not quite fake bravado, but it's not genuine either. It's a hint of something that could be, a promise come too early, a glimmer of the future. But it's still not quite right, not quite now. There's a part of him that wishes she'd just forget it, stop bringing it up, part of him rails against anything like the previous night happening again. But again, not very diligently. Regardless his face feels hot and he's sure she can see how ruddy his cheeks have gone.

He glances over at her, trying to keep his expression serious, trying to employ some of that gruffness that's worked for him in the past, but she's smiling and her eyes look almost turquoise and despite himself he feels his mouth quirk up on the one side, a half grin, cautious, maybe even a little sly.

She touches her neck, the skin that was under his lips only a few hours ago. He remembers how he'd half-covered her body with his, how despite all the clothes in the way he'd been able to feel every curve, the gentle press of her small breasts, the heat between her thighs. His face burns hotter and she raises her eyebrows coyly.

She ain't as easy to read as he thought and she could just be faking and pretending. There's a part of him that hopes she is. That she's at least a tiny bit as jangly as he is. A tiny bit as thrown off, a tiny bit as scared.

He pushes her foot out of his lap good-naturedly.

"You can check your own goddamned ankles from now on," he says, picking up his pie apples.

**xxx**

Four days later he sits on the floor in the chill passageway outside her bedroom, crossbow close to his hand, head against the wall. They're in house number eight, the final house in this bizarre chain of suburban living.

Beth insisted they went through the houses one at a time.

"We're both still bruised and battered," she said, her feet wheedling their way back into his lap, his hand covering her ankles almost automatically despite having pushed her away less than a minute before. "We need to do it one thing at a time."

So they had taken it slow, very slow. Frequently stopping for breaks, moving through a house or two a day, taking note of what was where, what they needed and what the could salvage. Each house had been a bit wacky in its own way. If not the style and the furnishings, then the clothes they'd found or type of food the people kept on their shelves. One was full of books with surreal, Mexican-themed prints on the walls, another looked like the owner had either been a circus performer or a Liberace impersonator with a collection of feather boas all the colours of the rainbow. Beth had laughed out loud when she came across a bunch of hundred dollar bills tightly rolled up inside a plastic hair curler and hidden in a wicker basket under the bed.

He hadn't. Because that's exactly the way his Grandma had hidden her extra cash too, believing that she was about to be robbed by "them scoundrels Merle always hangs around". Come to think of it she was probably right.

But of all the houses - they never went back to the first one - this one makes him the most sad. It's full of doilies and frills and pictures of an old couple surrounded by children and grandchildren. It's a bit _Little House on the Prairie_, a bit _The Waltons_, even though it doesn't suit the house at all. Regardless it feels like more of a home than any of the other places so far. There are memories here, deep and wonderful memories, made by people he'll never know, having lives he'll never experience.

It was also the only house harbouring walkers.

They'd tapped on the window outside and waited and when nothing happened he went inside believing it to be empty.

It wasn't.

The smell of rot told him that.

They'd found the previous owners standing in the kitchen, looking into the fading sunset. They were so still and so quiet that he thought they were already dead, that they were like that woman he'd helped Beth cover at the golf club of his nightmares. But they weren't. They snarled as he entered the kitchen, tottering on brittle bones, skin flaking from their faces. He thought they almost looked as if they could be holding hands and once again he wondered if they retained the slightest shadows of memory. That Milton fellow, the Governor's bitch or whatever he was, believed they did. Daryl wasn't sure. And it didn't stop him stabbing them both fast and efficiently, before Beth was even in the room. But it did make him question if they saw, if they felt or if their only desire was all consuming hunger for fresh meat. The last one, he decided. Definitely the last one.

He cleared them out quickly, trying not to let Beth see. The man may not look like Hershel but he was the right age and also had a big bushy beard and he didn't want her eyes filling up with tears.

Even so, he'd been surprised when she said they should stay the night. They'd been sleeping in the second house, the 70s man cave since the first night, but she said they could do with a change and she wanted to stay here. It seemed a strange choice and then he realised that the furnishings probably reminded her of the old farmhouse she grew up in. Probably made her comfortable.

They'd gone to bed at the same time, but as he had done every night so far, the minute he detected her breathing from down the hall, he eased himself off his mattress and moved to sit outside her door. It wasn't planned, wasn't decided on beforehand, but he'd found himself doing it almost out of force of habit. Stand guard over her because he never wanted to let her out of his sight again. Knowing that she's there and safe meant more to him than the few hours of restless sleep he'd get anyway. He guesses that in the old world this would be considered creepy, but it's not the old world any more and he's beyond caring.

It's Beth. It's always been Beth.

He stretches, cracking his neck. The pop is unnaturally loud and it echoes a little. He'd kill for a cigarette, but he smoked his last one two days ago, when they were going through house number five, when the miserable drizzle had let up to give way to just plain freezing, icy cold temperatures.

He doesn't like the cold, never has. Wasn't much of a fan of the heat either but at least he was used to that. But he's wondered often if cold isn't actually the answer to all this. Not that the cold will kill the virus or anything, just that the walkers tend to slow down when the temperature plummets. Last winter some of them even froze to the ground outside the prison and he'd used them for target practice with Michonne. He grins remembering how she couldn't even shoot them when they were absolutely still. Woman was useless with guns, probably worse with a crossbow although he hadn't offered. She didn't get it, never would. Although he's pretty sure katanas aren't his thing either.

Each to their own.

When Michonne eventually did an elegant twirl, more like a dancer than anything else and lopped a head off, they'd chuckled. He feels a small twinge about it now.

_(Killing them isn't supposed to be fun)_

Beth's right of course. It ain't. But there ain't much fun to be had any more.

He pulls on the strap of the crossbow so that the arrows don't stick into his ass and the metal scrapes loudly across the wooden floor.

He hasn't really given himself time to think, to dwell. He misses his people. Rick, Carl, Michonne, Maggie, Glenn, Carol. Thinking of Carol chokes him up a little and he closes his eyes.

_(You gotta stay who you are)_

Yeah, but do you? What if you were once a family man, an office drone and then you turned into a psychopath?

What if you were once a sheriff's deputy and you turned into someone who'd shoot your best friend dead over a woman who never really wanted you in the first place?

What if you were once a grieving mother and then you killed innocent people for the greater good?

The betrayal still smarts and he tries to push it away. Feels bad for even thinking it. It ain't about him. It _so_ ain't about him. There's a level on which he gets it, understands it. There's no level on which he likes it. And despite it all he believes that's the same for Carol too. Difference is, there's a shitload of levels between where he could have justified it and where she did.

A shitload.

He'd like to think it would have been different if it was one of them. If it was Glenn or Maggie or Carl. If it was Beth. But that makes him feel worse. And starts bringing up all sorts of moral questions that his Ma would have told him he was clever enough to answer, but he really wasn't. He didn't realise how complicated the apocalypse can make your life. And it sucks all kinds of balls.

"Daryl?"

He looks up. Beth stands in front of him, wiping the sleep from her eyes. Her hair is messy and her sweat pants hang low on her hips.

"What are you doing?" she asks, her voice a little low, a little cracked.

"Nothing."

Frowning, she squats down in front of him and he doesn't want to look at her, her bright hair, the naked flesh of her shoulder where the bruises are fading, the sharp hip and the curve of her waist where her top is ruched up.

She takes his hands in her own. He doesn't mind, doesn't flinch. It's comforting, this familiarity they have. He's found himself touching her a lot lately, more than necessary. A hand on her arm, her shoulder, his knee against hers as they sat on the couches or the floor, while they ate. Every now and then she would hug him too, usually when they'd found something good, like food or warm clothes or shoes in her size. The hugs are brief but not infrequent and he wonders if this is her way of touching him, her way of showing him how she feels without the defiance she displayed that first night. He finds it comforting, it makes some of his rough edges feel smoother and he finds the voices in his head stay quieter. They don't talk about it, this thing between them, they don't ever try and recreate that first night again. He tells himself they ain't that familiar, but the truth is he ain't that confident. And the thought of kissing her again, while terrifying, is never far from his mind. He just hopes that when he touches her she knows what it means. His thigh against hers, his hand on her hip.

"Daryl?" she asks again and, even in the dark with only a little cold moonlight for illumination, he could get lost in her eyes.

"Is this why you've been so tired? Do you do this every night?" she asks and he looks at her feet and those silly pink nails and he wants to ask why she isn't wearing socks, those tatty teddy ones she likes so much because they're thick and thermal.

He nods and wishes he was anywhere and nowhere else at the same time. She wasn't meant to know he kept watch at night, was supposed to think he went to his own bed and stayed there. That was the decent thing to do. The good thing to do. The thing that people like Rick and Glenn would do. This, this here, sitting outside her room while she sleeps because he so damn terrified that she'll be gone when he wakes up. That ain't decent. That's a little crazy and a little messed up and a host of other shit he doesn't want to think about.

"Daryl, you have to sleep," her thumbs ghost across the back of his hands and his fingers tighten around her.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah."

"I'm serious," she says.

She stands, tugging him with her, pulling him to his bedroom. He grabs the strap of the crossbow as he goes, but she takes it away from him and dumps it on a white painted chest of drawers next to the bed.

"You must be exhausted," she says.

He wants to say he's dead on his feet but that seems inappropriate, so he frowns at her.

"You ain't gonna tuck me in Beth," he tells her as she pushes him towards the bed, with it's brown feather duvet and fleece blanket.

"No, and I ain't gonna read you a bedtime story either," the retort is a little sharper than he expected. "Get in."

It's that voice again. That stern voice of hers. The one that says _I might be five foot nothing and weigh 100 pounds soaking wet but I will beat your ass if I have to, so bring it Bitch. Bring it._

He listens. Ain't no help for it. Nothing to be done. So he listens.

And then she walks to the other side of the bed and slides in next to him and it's his turn to ask what she's doing.

She looks at him across the pillows. She's not covered and he can see the curve of her bosom through the thin material of her top. And he feels Merle stirring somewhere in his mind.

"Figured we've done it before, need to stop being so childish about it."

He's about to answer but she's matter-of-fact when she carries on.

"So, you wanna be the big spoon or the little spoon?"

He snorts and she smiles.

"Hope you don't snore Greene," he tells her. "And don't you go stealing the covers."

She nods, mockingly stern - aye aye captain - and he wants to kiss her, but he can already hear Merle starting to laugh, so he lies back instead, concentrating on how he's comfortable for the first time in weeks.

She watches him for a moment as he takes her hand under the covers, and then he sees her eyes slide closed and soon she's breathing heavily. He likes the sound, so close, so intimate and he wonders if he could just lie there all night listening to it.

But he falls asleep minutes later.

And he's the big spoon.

**xxx**

They stand outside surveying the houses. It's cold and she's wrapped up in at least four layers but she's still stamping her feet.

He doesn't know what they're looking for just that this was brought on when he swore up a motherfucking storm in the cold shower this morning. She'd asked if he knew how to get the gas working and he'd said he could give it a shot because Tyreese had shown him a thing or two when they fixed up the prison. So she'd taken his hand and dragged him outside into the sharp wind, which turned her cheeks blotchy and left frosty droplets in her hair.

She tells him this little complex looks like a Lego village and he nods because he never had Lego as a child and while he understands the principle he doesn't understand the fuss.

That kid Patrick back at the prison seemed to like it though, was always sitting around building spaceships and houses and shit. It makes him wonder if Beth, Maggie and Shawn had Lego when they were kids. If Hershel and Annette sat around watching their group of yours, mine and ours playing with the little brightly coloured blocks on a blanket on the ground. He wonders if little Beth had a big messy ponytail with a braid back then. The idea chokes him up a little, too many reasons to go into, but it makes him sad and happy at the same time.

"Which one?" she asks.

"What do you mean?" he's cold too and he can't feel the tip of his nose. And he really wants to get inside with her again.

"Which one do we stay in? We've been through them all. We know what we need. Now we have to figure out which one to stay in. Otherwise you'll have to fix the gas for them all."

"Yeah, ok." He hasn't really given much thought to staying, not to anything beyond raiding these houses really. Fact was the idea scared him after what happened the last time he suggested they stay somewhere. He doesn't like the idea of repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

On the other hand, there's Beth. And the prospect of staying here with her in a real house, with real heat, maybe even some lights if he can hold it all together with chicken wire and good intentions, doesn't seem like an opportunity that's going to come around every day.

"Ok," he says again.

She blows on her hands as the wind whips at her hair. "So which one?"

"Don't matter,"

"It does matter,"

"Which one do you like?"

"I want to pick the right one."

"Beth, it ain't like we got a mortgage. We can move if we don't like it."

"No we can't, it has to be right."

"Ok."

She looks around, eyes wide, brow furrowed, biting her bottom lip, which is already turning purple. He doesn't get why this is so important to her, but it is, so he goes with it and lets her stomp around in the cold, freezing her ass off as she does.

She's hilarious in her own sweet way. Practical and logical, yet utterly breathtaking and ignorant of it all.

"What your favourite colour?" she asks all of a sudden.

He debates saying green just because he knows it will piss her off and she looks so very serious. But he says blue, the colour of her eyes.

"Ok that's number seven."

"What do you mean blue is seven?"

She points to the cerulean flower box and he nods. That's the one with the books and the strange art on the walls. The one that looked like it belonged to a young couple just starting out, although why they'd decided to put down roots here is beyond him.

"Ok, number seven then," she takes a deep breath and suddenly he can tell she's nervous and he smiles because it's kind of endearing.

She walks up the steps to stand on the porch and then turns to look at him, windblown hair framing her face.

And she's beautiful.

"Welcome home Mr Dixon," she says reaching for the doorknob.

"Hey wait," he says coming up behind her and in a moment that he can only imagine later was complete and utter insanity, he slides his arms around her, hoisting her legs up, ignoring the still fresh pain in his shoulder.

She laughs and holds on, linking her arms around his neck.

"What are you doing?" She asks as he carries her into the house and he knows nothing will ever be the same again.

He grins down at her.

"Gotta be right, right?

* * *

**The quote Daryl couldn't remember was obviously ****Friedrich Nietzsche's:**

**"****Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you."**


	4. Chapter 4: The Lion's Den: Part one

**Okie dokie, I know this has been a very long time coming, but this chapter and the one that follows have been insanely difficult to write because well, I suck at writing tension and anything that involves action. It was stopped and started four times and I think this is about as good as this chapter is going to get. Be kind.**

**I promise there will be a lot more Bethyl after this chapter. I realise some might think this is a little Bethyl-lite.**

**As always thanks to every single person who has been reading, reviewing, following, favouriting. It really has made me very happy and I hope I am not disappointing anyone. Your kind words mean so much to me.**

**As always I do not own anything but lordy after seeing the Emily and Norman pics from Comic Con I wish I owned them.**

**Soundtrack for this chapter:**

**How soon is now? - The Smiths**

**What do I have to do? - Stabbing Westward**

**The sinner in me - Depeche Mode**

* * *

"Glenn, wake up Glenn! Wake up!" It's Maggie's voice, somewhere in the fog of his mind, grabbing him pulling him out of his dreams. Dreams of happier times. Dreams of the farm, the prison. Not dreams of this cold and smelly boxcar where he's wedged on the corrugated floor between Maggie and Tara.

Groaning, he rolls over, causing Tara to shift a little but not wake.

"What?" he asks before he's even ready for the answer. It's too early, too cold and too shitty in this nightmare to wake up. He's almost angry. Feels like Maggie cheated him or something. Sleep longer, less time to worry about what the shitheads outside are doing, less time to hear the muffled cries and the flames of that barbecue roaring over the Georgia winter. Less time to smell that seared meat. The smell that nauseates him even as it makes his dry mouth water.

"Glenn?" her whisper is desperate and he opens his eyes, blinking in the half light, shivering involuntarily against a gust of cold air that seeps in through the rusted metal. They don't have blankets. They were never given any.

Livestock don't need blankets.

"What?" he asks again, more ready this time but not really ready enough. He's still feeling a little pissed and hopes she hasn't woken anyone else in this godforsaken pit. Let some of them escape to oblivion at least. Until the final oblivion of course. None of them want to escape to that.

Her eyes are big and she's dirty, really, really dirty. Livestock don't need baths either or proper ablution blocks. Livestock live in their own filth, they shit where they eat. They don't need sunlight and clean beds because once you fatten them up, they're off to the slaughter. Well unless you plan on breeding them, but even so they still don't need anything more some murky water - water that's full of leaves and dirt and insects - and a few handfuls of feed. Powdered milk and dried corn. Occasionally some dirty vegetable peels. Yeah, it's not _food_, it's _feed_. Feed, that's making Maggie really sick, so sick she barely eats. Fact is it's making them all sick but she seems to be taking it the worst and even now in the bad light he can see her skin is clammy, grey, a horrible pasty sheen of sweat on her despite the chill of the early morning.

Even so, he thinks she's beautiful. Always has. Always will and he can't stay mad at her for waking him up. He's ashamed by his irritation. This could be their last day together, when anything could happen and they could be torn apart again on a whim.

He takes her hand, squeezes it.

She squeezes back, a small relieved smile even plays on her lips for a second before her eyes turn hard again and she glances up from their linked fingers to his face.

"Glenn," she tells him, her voice a low, urgent whisper. "We have to get out of here."

"Is someone coming?" he asks, eyes darting over to where Rick is sitting at the opposite end of the car, Carl's head in his lap. Rick never seems to sleep. And he isn't now. He's watching, planning, waiting. They're all waiting even though they're not really sure for what yet.

Maggie looks confused for a second, really confused. And it throws him off because it's a straightforward question and he's not sure why it wouldn't have a straight answer.

"Maggie, is someone coming?" he says again, more insistent.

"No, no," she says but she sounds uncertain.

"So what's going on?" he asks. She's freaking him out and he doesn't like it. She's not prone to this. She always has words, she always has answers. She doesn't speak in riddles. It's what he loves about her. How she's direct, to the point. Straightforward.

_(I'll have sex with you)_

Jesus, Glenn, not now, he thinks, squeezing her hand hard.

"Maggie?" he tries again.

She shakes her head and it's like she's trying to get the cobwebs out of her brain, "Glenn you don't understand. We have to get out of here."

"I know Maggie," he touches her arm gently. "We're working on it. You know the plan. We just need time."

She bites her lip, looking over at Rick and Carl, across at Michonne and Rosita, Abraham, Eugene.

"It has to be now," she says and he frowns. This really isn't like Maggie. Not like her to freak out, not like her to have a meltdown, especially not now. Now when they've been here for as long as they have. When they've had time to process, adjust even to what is going on. It doesn't make sense that now, on this freezing morning no different from all the one's before, she'd suddenly lose it, suddenly be hysterical when she's kept calm for so long.

He touches her cheek gently. It's an affectionate gesture but it's also to test the heat or her skin.

"It's ok Maggie," he tells her, even though it's not. Even though her skin is hot and wet and yet also feels like paper.

"Glenn, you don't understand," she says again and he starts to think her fever is worse than he thought, starts to wonder if she knows what she's saying or doing.

"Ok Maggie, explain it to me."

She does.

She really does and he wants her to stop talking and carry on at the same time. Even as the shock seeps in and the colour drains from his face, so that his grey skin matches hers.

If he felt cheated before, cheated out of a few snatches of sleep, he doesn't have the words to describe how he feels now. _Cheated_ does not even begin to cover it. This is nothing compared to what he felt when Maggie woke him too early. Nothing. He feels like something has been taken from him, something he'll never get back and never experience again.

Tears prickle in his eyes as he fights the urge to scream, to rage. It's a tough fight. This one against himself. Harsh. Where winning means losing and vice versa. He's not sure he'll ever know what side of him won. Doesn't care to.

Regardless, he forces himself to breathe deeply, to breathe in the disgusting scent of the effluvia in this car, to just let the thick air in and out of his lungs while he pushes away the hysteria and wrestles his way back to reality, whatever reality this may be.

Closing his eyes, he kisses Maggies fingers, also hot and clammy, wrapped round his own.

"Ok," he tells her. "Ok."

He stands, helping her up, extracting themselves from this tangle of sleeping, snoring bodies without disturbing anyone, without pulling anyone else back into this thing they call life. Let them sleep a while.

Lord knows, they all need it.

Rick looks up as they approach him, hand in hand. His eyes are glassy, a hard ice blue and he's grizzled, hairy, dirty, more bear than man. Michonne was right, his face really is losing the war. Glenn wonders how much of his mind is too.

"Hey," he says, voice gruff from the morning.

"Hey," Glenn answers.

"What's up?" he strokes Carl's hair gently, a gesture Glenn suspects he wouldn't dare when Carl is awake. It's fatherly, something from the old world, an inherent kindness and affection that only a parent could really understand. It's one of those things that no matter how old Carl gets, no matter how big, how tough, how hardened he becomes, he'll always be Rick's little boy, always his son that he had dreams of playing baseball with. Of taking to games, of teaching to drive.

Drive a stick maybe.

Rick strikes him as the kind of dad who'd want his kid to know how to drive a stick. He guesses Carl's going to have to learn soon anyway. Not like there's any law against driving underage any more. In fact it's more a necessity now than ever. This is a new world after all, an ugly one where you teach your kids to kill walkers before they learn to walk themselves.

He thinks of Judith and then of Beth and all the people they've lost and he realises this is going to be harder than he thought and, for a second, he wants to back out, he wants to keep their secret, not let anyone else intrude. But he looks at Maggie and she smiles and he knows he loves her more than life, like she deserves to be loved and he won't let her lose anything else ever again the way she lost her father and sister. The way they've lost Daryl and Carol and Tyreese. Karen.

"Rick," he says bending down so that their faces are close, his voice hushed. "We need to get out of here. And we need to do it now."

XXX

The street is dark and quiet as he sits in the car outside the doctor's rooms watching, waiting, listening to the sounds of the night, listening for the brush of hobbling feet, the groan of dead men. But there's nothing. Silence. Silence and the smell of death. Silence except for her voice echoing in his ears.

_Come home to me Daryl Dixon. Come home._

The seriousness of her words amplified by the hardness - dare he say _coldness_ - of her eyes.

She hadn't wanted him to go.

She'd been adamant about that. Adamant. He should stay. Wait for the morning and she'd go with him. They were a team remember? Didn't he know that? Isn't that what they decided? Agreed on?

She was right. They had. No denying that.

But her coughing had become so bad over the past week, so very, very bad and all he could think about was the flu and the prison and how if she got sick they were both screwed.

It started out slow. A little chill, she said, just a cough, a blocked nose. She said she was getting better, still claimed she was weeks later when they'd gone through the cold and flu meds they found in the houses. Gone through them all. No more cough syrup, no more Sudafed, no more hot toddies and lemon-flavoured drinks that tasted nothing like lemon.

He knew it before she did. She wasn't getting better. Even though she said she was fine, it was just a cold, just a chill and she'd be good soon. Right as rain, she said, right as rain.

Yeah, what his Ma said the night she set herself and everything else on fire.

_Don't worry Daryl, don't worry my boy. Mama's gonna be right as rain after she has a lie down. Nothing for my boy to worry about. Tomorrow we'll go for ice-cream and play in the park._

And then she'd closed herself and her bruises and her friend Jim Beam up in the bedroom and he never saw her again.

Still saw Jim though. Saw Jim a lot when his old man was taking a belt to him, saw him a lot when there was no food in the house, saw him even more when the old geezer sold his Ma's opal bracelet that her Grandma gave her on her deathbed. Was a little windfall for Will Dixon, that bracelet. Didn't use the cash to buy anything good though or fix anything, pay off his debts. No, he used it to buy Jim. Jim and whores and a couple of skin magazines that Merle would steal when the old man wasn't looking.

He still fucking hates that his old man did that. Still fucking smarts, 'cos his Ma loved that fucking bracelet. Told him that one day he was going to find a girl with eyes as blue as those opals and she was gonna love him so hard and his Ma was gonna love her too because Daryl would choose the perfect girl, the best girl. And then he could give her the opal bracelet because that's where it really belonged. Not with Mama and her leathery arms, arms old before their time, ravaged with cigarette smoke and too much sun. Too much Jim and way too much wine.

_No,_ she said, _it belongs on the wrist of your girl, your pretty girl who'll love you like you're the only man in the whole world. Your pretty girl that you'll treat right. Treat good and proper, like a lady. Treat her..._

He stops.

Yeah, he doesn't want to think about that right now. His Ma and her ramblings, his Ma and her pain. His Ma and her bracelet. His Ma and Beth. Because then he's really going to go back to Crazytown. Gonna get himself caught up in all the shit from before and he already burned that the fuck away. No call to let these wraiths rise from the embers any more. No call to bring anything from the past into this new home - number seven with the cerulean flower box - that they have now.

'Sides, what his blue-eyed girl needs are meds, what his blue-eyed girl needs is for him to be making her godawful citrus drinks and putting a cold compress on her head. To be holding her while she tries to sleep.

Yeah, that.

Hold her while she sleeps.

In their bed.

The bed they now share.

He thinks maybe there's a part of him that should feel embarrassed about it. Ashamed maybe. But there ain't. And he guesses that in itself makes him ashamed. But it really doesn't. And he's given up trying to wrestle with it. Given up looking for reasons to feel guilty.

He'd tried to do the honourable thing, the decent thing, when they moved their shit into the house a month ago. After carrying her

(across the threshold)

inside, and getting a kiss on the cheek that he hadn't responded to but felt all the way down to his toes and back, he'd taken his stuff to the spare room, dumped it on the bed. His intentions had been good, righteous even.

Path to hell and all that. Yeah, he knows. Intent ain't magic.

It started out ok. Started out decent. He thought she would be shy about discussing sleeping arrangements. He certainly was. Wasn't no good reason in the world to sleep in the same bed. Sure, there were flesh-eating monsters outside and sure, it was probably safer and warmer now since it had gotten so, so, so cold but there wasn't a good reason to actually sleep in the same room, let alone the same bed. Not really anyway.

Not to say that the nights he'd spent snuggling with Beth Greene were not the best nights of his life. They were. Hands down. Even if he finds it hard to admit. Wasn't another night in his life that even came close. But getting into bed with her, just matter of fact and all? That seemed forward, presumptuous.

Indecent.

And he was decent, he decided. He was one of those good people Beth kept talking about.

She hadn't said anything when he went to the spare room, just watched him with those big blue eyes, while she stripped the bed in her room and changed the covers and he was grateful. Grateful she didn't press. Grateful she left him be.

Told himself that he wasn't going to sit outside her room any more, wasn't going to be paranoid and delusional and that she would still be there in the morning. He'd work it out, he'd be fine.

But when he was supposed to go to sleep, once he'd made sure everything was locked up tight for the hundredth time, once he'd checked and rechecked the chain he'd found for the gate, walked the fence and added another cutlery barrier to the porch outside and he finally got into bed, he couldn't.

He laid there in the dark, tossing and turning. There was no wind, no rain, no shuffle of dead feet outside even though now they were too far from the street to hear it. Just silence, silence that made him twitch uncomfortably, silence that seemed too loud and too tangible to be real. Silence that filled you up and drained you out all at once.

There was nothing. Not even the sound of Beth's breathing.

He didn't like it. He felt itchy, too alert, prickly. And the urge to get up and sit outside her room - again, paranoid, deluded, frightened out of his fucking mind - was undeniable.

And that was when Merle had started up again.

_What you want Darylina? You wanna tap that ass? Yeah you do. Yeah you do. C'mon go make ol' Merle proud._

No, he told himself, no. It wasn't like that. Not like that at all.

Sure, Beth was beautiful, fucking heartbreaking.

But it wasn't like that.

It wasn't like he looked at her and wanted to bang the shit out of her, fucking take her like she was a piece of meat. Wasn't like he got off on the idea of getting it on with a young, pretty girl like her. That ain't it at all.

_So what is it brother? You wanna hold her? You wanna kiss her? You wanna make sweet love to her with rose petals and candlelight? What is it?_

Merle again. Always fucking Merle. Always demanding explanations. Always hanging around like the devil on his shoulder. Always uncovering that deep, dark part of himself and using it.

But not this time. Not this time because he had an answer. The only answer.

_It's Beth, it's always been Beth._

He'd waited for the onslaught, waited for Merle's crowing, his old man's snigger, his Ma's quiet sobs. But it didn't come. In fact quite the opposite. They were silent. Silent as the sounds that filled up the house, the world.

Silent as The Lord as He watched His creation go against the laws of life and death as set out since the beginning of time.

Silent as death.

They were all doomed anyway.

Funny thing though, funniest thing ever, in that moment none of it, none of it seemed so terrifying, so real.

He'd tossed the covers aside, sat on the edge of his bed and before he had time to talk himself out of it, walked out of the room and down the passage.

And ended up in her doorway. Again. Empty-handed. Words backing up behind his teeth. So many of them but not one he dared voice.

She was still awake, most of the room in shadows, the smallest halo of light from a flickering candle. He'd kept his chin down, eyes jumping between her and the floor. Waiting for her to say something, anything. He didn't care. Even if it was to tell him off, send him back to his bed, out of the house. Tell him he should crash at Mr Dudebro across the path. But she'd smiled and even in the half glow from the candle casting shadows on her skin he couldn't believe how clearly he saw her, how real and tangible she was to him in that moment.

It was a fucking miracle that she was here, something that doesn't even compare to any water into wine party tricks.

(He needs to stop with the mocking though, he knows she doesn't like it.)

Wordlessly, she'd pulled the covers open on his side of the bed.

_His_ side.

"Was wondering how long it would take," she said. "Glad it was sooner rather than later."

He'd needed a moment to process her words. He hadn't thought that far. Hadn't thought that maybe she'd be ok with it, maybe she'd invite him in as casually as asking if he'd like a beer or a snack. Hadn't had anything planned for that scenario. He'd kinda just been leaving the big decisions up to her, trusting her to make the right call and somehow know what is was that he needed.

She'd never been wrong before.

"Come on," she said, snapping him out of his thoughts long enough for him to understand the invitation in her words. "It's cold. Get in."

So he did. Padded across the floor, like a bad dog, wary, frightened, skittish and shifted down onto the mattress next to her as she tossed the comforter over him. He hadn't reached for her. Not immediately anyway. Just lay there on his back pinching the bridge of his nose, eyes closed, while he focused on blocking Merle out. Merle and his dirty words, Merle and his dirty laugh, Merle and his dirty thoughts.

And after a few minutes she'd touched his elbow gently and asked what was wrong, what he was thinking.

He hadn't answered, hadn't want to. Was content to let the silence stretch like a rubber band to the point of breaking. But when he heard her take a breath in anticipation of continuing to talk he opened his eyes. She was propped up on one arm, looking at him. Like she always did. Like she could see right through him to the other side and was absolutely 100% fine with everything he was showing her.

"Is this ok Beth?" he'd asked, knowing she got the fullness of his question.

He waited for her to launch into a long explanation, knew she had one just waiting in the back of her mouth, in that brain of hers that overthinks almost as much as his does.

But she surprised him - he doesn't know why. Happened all the fucking time now.

"Yes," she said simply and blew out the candle, snuggling down into the blankets, body turned towards his.

He lay there a few minutes longer, waiting for Merle, waiting for his crowing, waiting for him to say something filthy, something to ruin this. But it never came. His head was clear, silent. For the first time in years. It was temporary, he knew it was just a matter of regrouping and rearranging tactics for self-sabotage. Knew it wouldn't last. But he'd figured he'd take it if it meant he could have this. Deal with the fallout later when he's sharper and brighter and maybe his shoulder felt a bit better.

He'd turned to face her, rested his hand on her forearm just above her wrist.

"Ok."

She looked at him long and hard like she did the first night and even though there was no light he had seen the fire in her eyes. She kissed him then. Chastely, briefly but it had still made his heart pound, made his cock twitch and his breath catch.

She settled back down next to him. Watching him, eyes locked on his. He hadn't looked away, not once until she fell asleep, their hands linked on the pillows.

He'd known it back then. He knows it now.

_To go to Beth Greene you must go with perfect courage._

And now almost a month later he knows that apparently you need it to leave her too.

Even if it is just for a run to pick up some cough syrup.

He sighs, closing his eyes briefly before looking back at this suburban dispensary, doctors rooms nestled in this street of oversized and overpriced houses.

It hadn't been a fight. Not exactly. But he guesses his idea of fights is a little different to you know, normal people. There'd been no screaming, no throwing things, no name calling, no threats, no violence. But she hadn't been happy about him going alone, not at all. She didn't like being apart, she said. She was matter of fact and all. Straightforward. To the point. Daring him to disagree. Said she did nothing but worry the whole time because when he drove out the gate, it could be the last time she'd ever see him. And then what? She'd be stuck not knowing what happened to him, maybe never hearing from him again. Besides it was too late at night, too dark out, he wouldn't be able to see properly, the weather wasn't great, easy for walkers to sneak up on you even if you're Daryl _fucking_ Dixon.

And he agreed. It was a bad fucking idea going off alone. But it couldn't be helped. She'd be coughing up a lung soon and he was damned if he was going to lose her to the common cold. Not that he thought she was going to die from a chill (hadn't even wanted to entertain the idea of the prison flu even though he did … briefly), but it would slow them down if they needed to move, it would give away their position if she coughed and sneezed. And frankly, he didn't like seeing her like this. Because even though she said she was fine, she was suffering.

Truth was he also felt a little responsible because it had taken him an age to fix the shower. Apparently he'd picked up less from Tyreese than he thought he had and they'd needed batteries and pipes and all sorts of shit they couldn't find in any of the homes. So they'd been showering cold for too long and he's pretty sure that's how she got sick.

For the past week, she'd been telling him not to worry, it couldn't be helped, but he did worry and he could help so tonight when she woke herself and him up coughing and sneezing, he'd climbed out of bed and pulled his jeans and jacket on.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"Gonna get you some meds for that Beth. You can't carry on like this."

"I'll sleep in the spare room," she offered. "Don't mean to disturb you."

"Ain't that," he said pulling on his boots.

"I can't come with you," she sat up against the pillows.

He thought that was the end of it. Thought she was just stating a fact, didn't even bother to reply really. But she wasn't done.

Nowhere near.

Because that's when it started. Told him he was risking his life for nothing. That if he just waited for tomorrow, when it was light out and warmer, she'd go with him. He told her no. Her eyes had narrowed and her mouth set in a firm line which reminded him of how she'd looked at him in those early days after the prison fell. The days that he'd disappeared into himself and raged silently at her for no other reason than she was there. And she could be raged at. And it made him feel better to resent her rather than resent himself. Eased the burden. Even if it didn't.

Yeah, he ain't proud of those days. Not at all, not in the slightest. Treating her like crap, the few barbed words he'd said only to hurt her, stop her, bring her down. And it felt like it had come full circle, because even though she wasn't being like him, even though she was still trying to communicate in that same old Beth way that involved reasoning and openness (this was still new to him because he sure as shit had never seen people communicate like that before) he could see she was pissed. Merle would have said she was on the rag but that was Merle's answer for every emotion any woman showed unless it was delirious happiness at seeing his dick.

But Daryl knew Beth. And that wasn't fair. He figured like _all_ Merle's other advice on women, it wasn't fair. She was sick and that made her vulnerable, protective and a little fearful, quiet, maybe even a bit introspective. She'd been talking about Maggie a lot, about her father, Rick, Carl. And not knowing what else to do he'd hold her at night, wrap his arm around her belly while she rested against his chest, struggling to breathe and he'd try and find some dumbass story to tell her to cheer her up, to make her laugh, and then realise he didn't have many. Even the funny ones, like the poison ivy and his ass had a dark overtone that he didn't want to bring into the bedroom, their bedroom, this unconsummated haven they'd made. So he'd try some lame jokes. He didn't really know how to tell jokes though and they'd always fallen a bit flat, but Beth would laugh anyway, maybe to humour him, maybe just because she's Beth and there ain't no one sweeter in the whole world.

Tonight before they'd gone to sleep he told her "a pie walks into a bar and the bartender says I'm sorry, we don't serve food here."

She'd laughed in a kind of exploding snort that both hilarious and kind of scary and then she'd turned over and kissed his jaw before snuggling into him, head on his chest, small shoulders shaking a bit as she coughed. He didn't mind any more that she could hear his heart pounding throughout his entire body. He was less certain about his arousal pressed against her stomach but even that didn't make her move.

He'd started to think that there's a part of her that likes this, likes knowing what she does to him, likes him to know what he does to her. It's not pressure, it's confidence, confidence that he'll eventually come to her as a man does to a woman.

But that was the last thing either of them was thinking of as she followed him down the stairs only a few short minutes ago, listing the reasons for him to stay, to wait. She told him it didn't feel right. That almost stopped him. Almost. Because Beth's instincts were good. Very good and she didn't say shit like that lightly. But then she'd sneezed again and he'd waved her off asking if she was psychic or something. Her jaw hardened and her eyes got colder then and even though he hadn't said it he was sorry. He promised he'd be quick, squeezed her hand gently. But she pulled away and went to sit on the couch with a cup of herbal tea.

He'd picked up the keys and then stood in the hall like a dumbass, waiting. Thing was, he didn't go on runs alone often. They'd only been in the house for a month and there hadn't been much call to leave and most of the time she'd go with him if they did need something. But when he would go alone there was a ritual they followed. She'd wrap her arms around him before he left, she'd kiss him sometimes, a little too long, before he got all jangly and walked away, squeezing her arm or her hip or whatever piece of flesh was closest to his hand. He liked that they'd repeat the process when he came back, that she'd wait for him by the window, take the steps two at a time when the car pulled into the drive. Sometimes he'd barely be out of it before her arms were around his neck, cheek pressed to his skin. And he'd hold her like that, hand cupping the back of her head, breathing in the scent of her hair, her skin, before telling her to get off and stop being so goddamned mushy. But if she stayed on the steps or in the house when he arrived he'd sometimes leave whatever shit he'd scavenged in the car and go to her first, give her arm a squeeze or touch her shoulder. He wasn't as forward as her, his nerves always got the better of him at the last minute and he wouldn't try and kiss her or hug her, but he liked the ritual, it felt good, something as close to normal as they could get in this suck ass world.

But not this time.

Hands in his pockets, he'd shifted from side to side for a while until he realised there wasn't going to be a hug or a kiss or anything like that. So he'd picked up the crossbow and headed out. The door was almost closed behind him when he heard her call.

He stopped, looked inside.

She was looking at him over her mug.

"Be careful," she whispered. "Come home to me Daryl Dixon. Come home."

He hadn't said anything because his throat was all closed up, so he'd nodded, made that noise he knew she'd come to accept as meaning "yes", "ok" and something else all at the same time.

He would be careful, he would come home.

And he needs to get on that because otherwise he's just going to sit around in the car thinking of Beth and his Ma and opal bracelets and pies walking into bars.

He opens the car door wincing a little at the gust of sharp, cold air that bites into his skin, chills him and he really just wants to hightail it back home, forget this crazy mission, forget the meds, forget everything and spend the night holding her. Come back in the morning, like she said. When it's light, when it's easy. When the horrors in the dark couldn't sneak up on you. But he can't. She needs something, and there's no time like the present. No use sitting here in suburbia like it really is suburbia any longer.

He stands. There's a walker stuck on the fence, but that poor fuck ain't going anywhere, and another milling by the front door now which he'll need to take out.

It's quick. He does it with his knife, right between the eyes. The corpse isn't even on the ground and he's banging on the window waiting for groans and moans and hisses that don't come. He's not surprised. He's not far from home and there haven't been many walkers around the area. He's not really sure why. It could be the cold because they do tend to be dopier and less energetic when the temperature plummets, although that doesn't really explain why the dispensary would be empty.

Either way, he ain't looking for a fight, just some meds and a safe passage back to Beth where hopefully she ain't still pissed. He knows she isn't though. He gets it. If the tables were turned and he was coughing up a storm and she was out here alone, he'd also be going out of his head a little. She's tough and all but still…

_How very 19th century of you Mr Dixon,_ he hears her voice and he smirks a little.

Ain't that either, not really anyway. It's more like he finds it hard to imagine that she could feel the same way about him going out on a run alone as he would feel if it was her. Seems pretty damn strange that anyone - let alone Beth - could feel that way about him. But there's a part of him that knows that somehow - against every cosmic law of the universe or something - she does. And he also knows it ain't just about the fact that he can protect her and provide for her because she sure as shit proved she can do it for herself. It's something else, something more and it scares him. Scares him more than all the walkers in the world.

He pushes the door open, shines the torch into the murky interior. Place is dusty, an overturned desk, a broken chair and a smashed computer to the one side, an open door and a shredded couch to the other. No doubt this was reception, no doubt someone's already been here. A lot of doubt as to whether he's actually going to find any meds.

But someone is smiling down on him as he edges deeper into the house and through the open door because he finds the dispensary easily and it's stocked. Not completely stocked, someone's definitely been here but there's enough and whoever went through it first obviously had no interest in cold and flu meds, which is a dumbass move in these times. But their loss, his gain and all that.

He wants to be precise in what he takes but ends up grabbing randomly because he doesn't actually have a clue what any of the prescription drugs do and doesn't want to waste time reading the labels. So instead he just grabs at anything that sounds vaguely familiar trying hard to remember the names of the drugs Hershel had written down for their run to the veterinary college.

Christ, that seems like a long time ago. Decades even when he thinks about all the shit that has gone down since then. The shack, the funeral home, Joe and now Beth.

Beth. Beth. Beth.

_Your blue-eyed girl._

Yeah. Thanks Ma.

She ain't no more his girl than he's her man. And that's to say none at all.

At least that's what he tells himself.

He also tells himself that this thing between them is platonic. That it's temporary. That it'd be pretty much the same with anybody.

Yeah he tells himself a lot of things.

But right now the only thing he needs to do is get what he came for and get home before some shit goes down that he's not prepared for.

Which is why he can't explain the overwhelming urge he has as he steps back outside into the night - over the walker - to go and investigate the house across the road. They don't need anything, they have food, meds, candles. They might need a few batteries in the future but they don't need them now. And a run like that is easier with two people anyway. In short there's as much reason for him to go into the house as there is for him and Beth to sleep in the same bed. So yeah. None. None whatsoever.

It's cold. It's dark. It's a world filled with the walking dead who want to eat you up. It's a bad idea and he knows it.

Even so, there's something that draws him to the house. It's big, expansive. A double story with white walls and a picket fence, similar to the house he found Beth in. It's also unsecured and there's far too many nooks and crannies that could hide walkers or people or whatever other horrors the world has left to throw at him.

He shakes his head, goes to the car.

_Go home Daryl,_ his Ma says, _go home to your blue-eyed girl and make things right._

Yeah, his Ma's got this one. He fumbles for the keys in his pocket but even as he does his eyes are drawn back to the house. He thinks of the opal bracelet, these people look like they could have been rich, he wonders if there's something similar inside. Wonders if he can find it, find it for Beth. She lost all her bracelets, still hasn't told him how. Wonders if he can make up for some of his old man's past mistakes. Wonders if this is the way.

It ain't.

He knows that. There are more important things he needs to worry about now. He also knows he's being dumb. This is a bad idea.

And yet somehow he's already on the porch, banging the crossbow against the window, waiting and listening and knowing that nothing's going to throw itself up against the glass. This whole area is too cleared out. Someone came through here before, someone's been through these houses, at least this block. The only walkers seem to be stragglers who've wandered in from elsewhere, lost to the herd.

A part of him wants to laugh at that. How much of a fucking loser must you be to not only be a walker but be rejected by other walkers?

Yeah, he ain't being logical again. Attributing human emotions to the dead. He knows the word for it: anthropomorphising. Merle always liked it, used to think it made him seem intellectual. Would tell Daryl to stop anthropomorphising Layla, the dog Daryl would feed on the sly.

Layla.

He gave her that name. He misses that mutt sometimes with her wary eyes and drooping tail, her gummy grin and mangy skin. He knew she wasn't human, but she was the only friend he had at times. Well until the one day she just didn't arrive at dinner time and he never saw her again. That smarts too. More than the bracelet. Not more than his Ma though.

He thinks there is a distinct possibility he has abandonment issues. And then he wants to laugh out loud at the thought.

But he doesn't.

Instead he bangs on the window again just to be sure and then pushes on the door. The lock is busted and it falls to the ground with a crash as he steps inside.

The house is big, cavernous even. No doubt some hotshot lawyer or politician lived here. Someone with money, probably played golf at that club him and Beth lost themselves in a million years ago. If that was hell then this is purgatory. For him at least. Him with his dumpster chairs and bikini ashtrays. He's not sure how Beth would feel about it. Beth with her solid family, Beth with her nice farmhouse and her Lego blocks, her piano and her string of pretty bracelets. Would she have been comfortable here in the old world? Could she have sat in the lounge and drunk ice tea, made small talk with the inhabitants? The wraiths that they are now? He's not sure but guesses it doesn't matter. Not any more, not in any real sense. What they have is now, because it's all they'll ever have. All they've had in a long time. And that's ok, at least he thinks it is, even if he knows that something like this wouldn't have been possible before.

It doesn't matter.

Problem is though, despite these little pep talks he gives himself and despite the fact that he needs to do it less often than he used to, in the back of his head he can hear Merle. And all he's saying is how it does matter, how it's the only thing that ever matters.

The smell hits him as he edges across an expensive Turkish carpet and into the lounge. Sickly sweet, rich and somehow sour and foul. The odour of putrefaction. Decay. It's cloying, sticky and he swears he can almost touch it in the too-thick air. It's funny, he thought he was used to it by now, thought it had invaded his clothes and skin and hair. Thought it was just part of him, maybe even part of Beth too, so familiar that neither one of them could actually smell it any longer, but apparently even in this death trap of a world he still knows what clean smells like.

And it isn't this.

There's definitely a body here, maybe a walker in one of the top rooms that couldn't get down the stairs, maybe just a corpse, but definitely something.

Covering his nose with his rag he glances around the room. Not much to see. The place is a little trashed but not too badly. His torch picks up a few overturned chairs, a navy couch (no chintz, thank God), some marks on the walls he can't quite identify and a few broken picture frames in the corner. A smashed mirror hangs above a fireplace full of tins and containers and other rubbish.

The smell though, the smell gets worse because now he can detect the acrid whiff of dried piss and something else beneath that he doesn't want to think about.

_Go home Daryl,_ his Ma says, _go home to Beth, she's waiting._

He bangs his torch on his hand to get it to shine a little brighter. It isn't a great torch, never has been. He found it at a truck stop with Joe but Len had already claimed all the good ones so he was left with this dim bulb that only really served to make the shadows darker and gloomier.

He makes for the stairs.

_Sit on the stairs Beth, sit on the stairs and old Len'll show you what he's got. You like that Bowman? You like it?_

He shakes his head. He doesn't know why he's thinking about this now. Beth with her ripped golf shirt being paraded around like a slave at a meat market. Beth is fine, Len is dead and he hadn't done anything to her. Her bruises are gone, that handprint that he hated more than anything in the world too. His shoulder was even healed. So it makes no sense that all he can think of now is what would have happened, how it could have gone down.

_Woulda, shoulda, coulda,_ his old man says, _it don't mean nothing now._

_But it does,_ says Merle.

_Go home Daryl, go home now._ That's his Ma.

She seems to be the only one talking sense.

The first step creaks as he stands on it and he waits a beat, but the house is silent. He takes another step. Better now, quieter. His boots barely even scuff the the wood. There's a smashed picture halfway up, a family photograph. Dad has a shock of salt and pepper hair and Mom looks like she just stepped out the pages of _Vogue_. Beautiful with chestnut brown hair and big green eyes. There's three kids, two girls and a teenage boy. He's all teeth and stick-out ears while the girls are blond, pretty, dressed in flouncy red dresses with bows on the shoulders. The cracks in the glass obscure their smiles and he wonders how the picture fell off the wall. If it was just normal attrition over time or if something broke it. He decides it was intentional because the picture is lying face up…

_Smash that picture Beth. It's Beth right? Bowman, your bitch's name is Beth, ain't it? I just wanna be sure. Need to be polite and all. Yeah? Smash this picture Beth. Smash it good._

Fuck, he shakes his head, stop it Daryl. Stop it.

The smell is getting worse as he climbs, deeper, thicker, fuller. He fights the urge to gag. It's something he hasn't had to do in ages. You get desensitised to it after a while, learn to live with it. But not now. Now his arrabiata dinner that Beth threw together from some tinned tomatoes and whole wheat pasta is about to make a second appearance and he stops to let the feeling pass, let his roiling stomach settle, biting back the sour hint of vomit in the back of his throat. The last thing this place needs is his puke to add to the odour.

Taking deep breaths doesn't help though, makes it worse, so he continues up, one hand on the bannister for support. Slow steps, deliberate. Doesn't want to fall, doesn't want to lose his balance because his stomach is acting like a whiny bitch.

The top step creaks, much like the bottom one and he stops again. Quiet, waiting.

Silence.

Silence and stink. Silence and rot. Silence and death.

He moves into the passage, turning left. Another Turkish rug that softens under his feet. The dim light from the torch picks up some more marks on the walls and he moves closer to investigate stepping over broken glass where more pictures lie smashed.

_Break that picture Beth, break it baby. Break it like I'm going to break you._

Glass crunches under his boot and that's when he hears it. So soft, so low, so faint he doubts himself, his instincts. Wonders if he's not hearing things. But there it is again. The quietest hiss, the most muffled groan.

He freezes, skin prickling and not in the good way that he feels when he's with Beth. In that bad way that way that tells you shit is about to go down. That ancient evolutionary gift that only now in this piece-of-shit world is rearing its head again, a bandage on a gunshot wound for all the good it does now, skills long forgotten by our cavemen ancestors now coming home to roost. Now that we're old and out of practice and stupid. Now that we've given them up in favour of the cell phones and computers and social media that we trust to do the thinking for us. Now when we need it most but don't have the time to learn it all over again.

The smell is terrible and he's sure there's a walker somewhere, lying in wait, desperate to sink its teeth into him, to turn him. He runs his light along the walls, shining it into the hollow doorways. But there's nothing. Just a gurgle, just a moan.

_Better get it,_ says Merle.

_Go home Daryl,_ says his Ma, _this place is not for you._

His old man is quiet.

The door at the end of the passage is closed and he knows it's in there, behind that door, waiting for him. He tells himself it's just a geek, a biter, he's killed hundreds already, this is going to be quick, easy, shouldn't be a problem.

Yeah, he tells himself a lot of things.

He heads to the door, presses his ear to it. It's quiet again.

Dead quiet.

But the smell. The smell is overpowering. It's not just decay. The odour of piss and shit is strong here too, stronger than downstairs. Stronger than the stink of the prison and the insidious reek of the moonshine shack. And suddenly all he wants to do is bury his nose in Beth's hair, her hair that smells of citrus and sunshine, hair that smells of life and light even on the cloudiest day.

His Ma was right, he needs to go home to her. Needs to hold her and touch her and feel the warmth of her skin on his. Feel the smoothness of her, the silk of her pressed against him. Her fluttery kisses against his chin, his cheeks. He'll go, he'll give her meds and rub her back. He'll tell her everything, all the shit that goes on in his head, tell her how he feels about her, something better than "hmmhmm yanno".

_Go home Daryl,_ says his Ma.

_Go home Daryl,_ says Merle.

_Go home Daryl,_ says his old man.

He pushes the door open, hard, quick, stepping back at the same time, crossbow aimed at the gloom. Aimed at the ghosts, aimed at the past.

The smell is horrific, death and piss and shit and vomit. The sweat of unwashed bodies. The guttural moans of walkers, strangled and thick and hungry. For a second it's all too much and his courage fails him. He backs into the passage wall against a skewed tapestry that's somehow still hanging, somehow still there.

_Take her upstairs, fuck her on the carpet. What do you think Bowman? You wanna watch? Wanna watch her scream for me?_

He stumbles a little, grappling at the fringes of the tapestry and pulls it to the ground, a puddle of warp and weft at his feet as he rights himself.

He should go. He needs to go. His Ma was right. This place ain't for him. It ain't for Beth. It ain't got anything he needs and is full of all the shit he doesn't.

_Go Daryl, go now!_ says his Ma.

_Come home to me Daryl Dixon,_ says Beth, _come home._

And there's part of him that's irrationally happy that her voice has joined the chorus. He'll listen. Listen to her, listen to his blue-eyed girl because she's the only thing that makes sense any more. The only thing keeping him sane.

He's about to turn, make his way back down the stairs before whatever hell is behind that door comes to find him. This was a stupid idea, it wasn't even an idea really. It was a fucking whim. A teenage boy in a man's body doing shit for the sake of doing it. Stupid, reckless, careless.

_What if you don't come home? Then what?_

Beth again.

_Leave now!_ his Ma is shrieking

And then he hears it. Scampering of feet across a wooden floor.

It's not shuffling, not hobbling, it's not the walk of the dead. The lurching of the living ghosts that now call this world their home. It's nothing like that. Nothing. It's too purposeful, too sure, too direct.

There's something else in there. Something alive and kicking. Something human.

He turns back, crossbow ready, finger on the trigger. He forces himself to control his breathing, forces through the sting of the smell, forces through the prickles under his skin that make him hot and cold at the same time. Hot and cold in that same way that's bad and ugly and nothing like Beth. He chokes back the nausea. Adjusts his stance. Peers into the darkness.

But it's quiet again. Quiet except for the angry rasping and the breeze through the trees outside. He waits.

He waits.

He waits.

And then he walks into the bedroom, the bedroom that's the same size as the entire Dixon trailer, into the smell, into the death, into the unknown, into the ninth circle.

Into hell.

Hell complete with a mission-style king-sized bed. Wooden, over the top, ostentatious. The sheets are purple - royal purple - for fuck's sake or at least they once were. Now they're stained, stained with piss and shit and blood and vomit, stained with decay and the rotting flesh of the two walkers tied together on the sheets, thin ropes looped around the headboard and under the mattress. Stained with death and ruin. It takes him a second but he realises that it's the boy from the photograph, all grown up now into a man and all deathed down into a walker and the sister too, the younger one he thinks. Maybe a little younger than Beth but who can tell when your skin is falling from your bones? When your life has run out of your body and all that's left is a fleshbag that has gone against the laws of nature?

Poor fucks, he thinks to himself. Poor stupid fucks who'll lie here until they can pull their rotted flesh out of their bonds and wander through this shithole of a house looking for live bait to consume.

Live bait which is hiding somewhere in this room. Live bait that's scampering around in the darkness and nesting here for some reason he can't fathom and probably doesn't want to. Live bait that thinks he's live bait. Live bait that he can hear breathing above the gasp and rasp of the walkers.

_Go!_ shouts his Ma, her voice high and strangled. The same voice she used when his old man was so drunk and so high that all he wanted was his belt, the thin one, with the buckle that tore strips of flesh with its bite.

_Daryl, please,_ Beth whispers, _please._

He plays the beam of his torch against the walls, shining it into the corners, looking for the source of the breathing, looking for that thing that can still scamper and not shuffle. The life in this room of death.

But he can't see it, can't find it hidden in the blue and purple shadows, hidden beneath the guttural noise of the walkers, lying in wait beneath the stench. It's biding its time, holding out for a mistake, not letting itself be found.

He finds something else though. Something his dumbass torch manages to illuminate above the bed. Something that turns his blood to ice-cold sludge, that loosens his belly even as it punches him in the gut. Something he only sees for a second, that he barely has time to register. One word written in dried brown blood. A word he's become way too familiar with. A word he's grown to despise and fear and resent as it grapples with him. As it tries to pull him back down to the life he left behind.

He barely has time read it because something is flying towards him across the room. Something dirty and small and screaming and flailing. Something that's agitating the walkers as it streaks over the wooden floor, all knees and elbows and a mass of filthy hair. Small and wild and shrieking.

It's a wonder he manages to read it. A miracle even as he's turning away, turning towards the new threat.

But he does.

He does read it.

Between the hissing and the rasping and the screaming. Between his Ma's sobs and Beth's pleas and Merle's shouting, he does read it.

He reads it and he knows it.

He lived it. He remembers it.

And it's all he sees as the thing, the wraith, the live bait leaps out of the darkness at him.

CLAIMED.


	5. Chapter 5: The Lion's Den: Part two

**Goodness, I am sorry this took so very long. It's really long so I do hope it was worth the wait. This was a tough one, but there's a ton more Bethyl in it, so I hope you all like it. Thanks again to anyone who is still reading this. Thanks also for your reviews, for your patience, for your lovely messages urging me to update. I appreciate every one.**

**I really hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think.**

**I don't own anything. I imagine everyone knows this...**

**Soundtrack:**

**The hand that feeds - Nine Inch Nails**

**Where do we go but nowhere - Nick Cave**

**Slave to Lust - The Mission**

**In Denial - The Mission**

* * *

Even in the bad light he can see his blood staining the carpet, can watch as it falls, red and thick, a broken, glistening rope of gore stretching from the bite mark on his arm to the pale grey pile at his feet.

It doesn't drip as much as it plops. He's not sure why that distinction is important to him, but it is. And it's stupid. He knows it's stupid.

_So this is it? _he thinks. _This is how it ends._

He makes a half-hearted attempt to pretend he has options, pretend there are solutions. The truth is there isn't. The truth is he already knows how this ends. And strangely, he's not emotional about it. Not at all. There's an acceptance, a relief even. The knowledge that it'll all be over soon is both liberating and terrifying. But then again, when was liberty ever comfortable?

His plan is simple. He'll put down whatever is in this room, alive or undead, whatever the case may be. He'll drive back to Beth, leave the meds on the doorstep, leave the car and then check out. Put a bullet through his brain. 1...2...3 clean and simple.

Bang! You're dead!

He doesn't like that though. Doesn't like the idea of actually pulling the trigger, holding the barrel of a gun in his mouth so that he tastes the steel, feels the metallic cold on the inside of his cheeks and then finding the courage to actually end it all. He really doesn't like that idea and it makes him briefly wonder if he could find an axe of some sort, a machete maybe and chop off the arm. He wonders if the poison is already too far gone, if he'd even be in time to stop the infection.

He doesn't know.

They cut off Hershel's leg immediately. But they hadn't had to do anything like that since. Who knows, maybe he should try. He could do it. If Merle could chop off his own hand, cauterise the wound and then drive a fucking car to God knows where, there ain't no reason why his baby brother can't do it too.

He is, after all, a tough son of a bitch.

But then he wonders, once again, clearly, calmly, if this is wise. If the infection has spread and he loses a limb and somehow gets back to Beth, what does that mean? That she'll have to put him down if he wasn't fast enough. Is that fair? Could she even do it? He thinks she could. He's not sure what would happen if the positions were reversed though. He watched Sophia be put down, put Merle down himself. Could he lose Beth that way too? Lose her and still stay sane? If he was the one that had to do it? He doesn't think so. He really doesn't think so.

But worse than that is the thought of her alone. Or her with whoever took her, her with Joe and the rest. That's bad. He doesn't want that. He _really_ doesn't want that.

He chances a glance out of the window. There's a garden shed outside, dilapidated, but there might be an axe in there. If he can get out of this room, that is. If he can escape whatever nightmare is waiting in the shadows.

He curses inwardly at his stupidity. At his reticence from earlier. How he hadn't seen this thing coming. Hadn't seen it because he was standing there like a fish out of water gaping at the fucking writing on the wall, breathing in the walker fumes that made him want to retch, running through the scenarios in his head of how this little tableau before him came to be.

_Tableau? _says Merle. _That's a fancy word for you little brother. A real fancy word. This what happens when you hang around fancy girls? You go and get all highfalutin? Forget your roots?_

And then that thing, that thing of bones and nightmares had knocked him to the ground. It was was small, feral, all limbs and hair and screeches that chilled him to the bone and simultaneously got the walkers riled up so that they snapped at the air, groaned and gurgled from their makeshift prison on the bed.

He hadn't seen a face, but the smell was enough. Foul, rancid, decayed. (Yeah, maybe he could think of a few more fancy choice words if he tried.) He'd lifted an arm to fend it off and that's when the teeth sunk in, hard and sharp and a fetid gust of breath had gone into his nostrils, his mouth, down his throat, making him want to gag.

He'd hit out with the crossbow, the side glancing off the thing's head before it scuttled back into the shadows, into its cave, its hole, its nest. A shape in the darkness, a bad dream. The monster under your bed. He'd stood up, backed up against the wall, listening to it scuttle about, its laboured breathing, the clicking of too long nails loud on the tiles of the en suite which smelled of shit and death and terror. And then it went quiet.

When he was a boy, about eleven or twelve, and before his old man burnt all his Ma's books to cinders, he'd nicked one off the shelf, one she told him not to read because it was too scary. But he'd take it anyway. A book about giant killer rats that came out of the sewers after a nuclear fallout. Rats bigger than honey badgers and just as vicious. They crept up from the London Underground into the radiation zone and feasted on whatever flesh they could find. They were the walkers of that world and the story scared him to death when he read it. He wonders now if the book was that farfetched, or if he really is facing down some giant rodent that's clawed its way up from the sewers and decided to feast on his arm.

He shakes his head. Ain't no time for thinking about the past. Ain't no time for trashy books and his Ma and any other shit that ain't going down in this room. Gotta think about the now, think about how you're going to move, how you're going to get out of here and salvage what you can of your miserable existence and Beth's magnificent one.

He stills. Stills his body and his mind, forcing himself to concentrate, straining for something other than the grunting of the dead. At first there's nothing, but he waits, imagining he's tracking a deer, listening to and then blocking the sounds of the forest, waiting for that whisper across the forest floor, the gentle crunch of autumn leaves.

And then he hears it, hears it under the bed, hears it slipping to the dresser, to the en suite, near the nightstand.

Clear as a fucking bell.

Its movements tell him it's not a walker. Not yet at least, but the sight of it, the smell of it, the stink of infection tells him all he needs to know. He just doesn't know what means. What it means if you're bitten by someone infected but not turned. He doesn't know, they never thought about that back at the prison. There were a lot of things they didn't think about.

He looks at his arm again, shaking the blood off it. It's slippery and it makes it difficult to hold the crossbow. His right arm. Great. Because you know, he didn't need that one. After all he has another. Another that's still a bit dicky because a guy went to town on it with a fucking tyre iron. But hey, he likes a challenge.

_Fuck,_ he thinks again.

_Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._

_After all this. All this shit. Losing his family, losing the prison, losing Beth and then finding her again, and now he's going to have to check out after all. Just when he started to put things back together._

_Another one of those cosmic jokes JC? _he wonders. _The fucking dude with the suicide issues has to put himself down. Ain't that a laugh? Working in your mysterious ways again? Having fun are you? Having fun while I leave my girl alone in this hell hole you and your Pops created?_

He's glad Beth isn't here to hear his thoughts. He knows it would upset her, blasphemy always does, but he guesses it doesn't matter now. Guesses it won't matter for much longer anyway. Now that he has to leave and all.

_You can't leave Beth, _his Ma says.

_You better leave Beth, _Merle answers, _what the fuck happens when you turn on her? What the fuck happens when you try and eat her?_

_Haha, what a joke, s_ays his old man, _You're gonna eat her out before you get to eat her out._

Yeah, his old man was always a dick.

He bites his lip as he hears the thing tumble across the floor again. He thinks it's hiding behind the couch across from the bed. Yeah, these rich fucks had a fucking lounge in their bedroom. Probably took tea here in the morning while some harried, underpaid woman waited on them hand and foot.

_Nice for some,_ he thinks, _really fucking nice for some._

Turning slightly, he aims vaguely at the ostentatious chaise. He can't see shit and if he shoots something and misses he won't have time to reload. Crossbows may be good for stealth but they're shit for speed and really shit for confined space like this.

He thinks he sees a shadow dart to the coffee table. Thinks, but can't be sure, because his mind is playing tricks on him now and his thoughts are so jumbled that he's not sure he knows anything other than the overwhelming urge to run screaming from the room and back to Beth, to curl himself round her body, hold her tight and close and breathe her in until he either chokes or drowns on her.

He doesn't care which.

Because there ain't no better way to go than that.

There just ain't.

Maybe it's the thought of her, the idea that he could get back to her one last time before he goes - before he checks out - or maybe it's just the decayed smell of the walkers and the desire to leave that behind that kicks him into action but he turns, deliberately, slowly, eyes scanning the shadows.

"You wanna come the fuck out?" he says into the dark room, making the walkers hiss, making his blood pound, making the world too small and too tight and too rotten.

Nothing.

Apparently it doesn't want to come the fuck out.

No matter then.

Each to their own and all that.

He's not sure what he really expected though. That it would give up, crawl out from whatever mess it was hiding under and show itself to him.

_Hey Daryl, here I am. Wanna shoot me? That'd be awesome._

He guesses he'd hoped so. Guesses hope is dumb. Guesses it only works for people like Beth. People who deserve it. The rest of them just have to take their chances with luck.

Daryl Dixon ain't that lucky. Never was.

_No Dixon was _that _lucky,_ says Merle.

'_Cept you, _says his Ma, _you got Beth. You got the blue-eyed girl and that's the luckiest thing in the world._

He doesn't know why his Ma needs to be such an old sap. Why she has to come up with her romance novel bullshit now. Now when he's bit and about to go and get himself killed. Not when it's all coming crashing down. And any hope he has is busy swirling around in the toilet bowl of his head. But she does.

She could always pick her moments, his Ma.

He glances back at the bed. The male walker has managed to pull a hand out of the bonds and it's flailing towards him. He notices it only has two fingers on that hand, looks like it's permanently flipping someone off and he feels hysterical laughter bubbling in his chest.

Ain't no call for laughter now. Ain't nothing funny about this situation. Nothing at all. He looks at the wall again, at the dried blood, at the thick trails of blood.

Fact is _that _scares him a shitload more than whatever the fuck is going down in this room. That Joe and the rest could be wandering around here somewhere, close to them, close to her. Getting ready to take him out, take her and make her pay for Len and Dan. He can't live through that again.

He won't.

The thought of Beth alone with them, with those fuckers he thought he could run with. Those fuckers that seemed to rise from the ashes of the burning cabin, a last ditch attempt to claim him back. He shouldn't have even entertained it. As if somehow it made them more real because he accepted it, because he let them in. Into him, into Beth. Because he was so fucking scared of being alone, he gave life to his ghosts and now they're coming back to haunt him. Him and Beth and…

He stops. He needs to be sharp. Sharp for whatever comes next. And this, this "Claimed" nonsense above the bed ... well, this sure as shit ain't helping. Sure as God made little green apples, as his Ma used to say when she was trying to be sober and cute. When she was trying to make up for a lifetime of sins as a mother in a few teetotalling days.

So he tells himself to calm the fuck down. Breathe slow and deep and look at your fucking options instead of lurching around from one half-baked plan to another. And for the first time in weeks, months maybe, he feels like a cigarette. He doesn't like to smoke around Beth, especially now since she's sick but the truth is he hasn't felt the need in a while now, even though there was a stash at Mr Dudebro's.

Yeah, it's the end of the world and Daryl Dixon has stopped smoking. Gotta worry about your health and all.

_(That's for spitting chaw when your old lady tells you to stop smoking)_

The thought doesn't comfort him. Not at all. In fact it pisses him off because it's from before. Before when he was just being him. Obstinate, obdurate, childish and just plain fucking ridiculous. Time wasted. Time wasted hating her, resenting her for being alive. Wishing that he was with anyone but her. Her, the daughter of the man he'd failed to protect. Her with her hope, her dreams, her goodness. Her with her blond hair and her pretty blue eyes. And now all he wants is to be with her. He doesn't care how any more. Never did actually. She's always been more forward, more brazen and he suddenly realises that even if he does make it back to her, that last kiss he gave her on that ratty couch in that ratty room in that ratty house will be the last kiss he ever gives her. Because there ain't no way he's taking a chance with her. Ain't no way he'll pass this infection onto her, give her his death.

He realises then just how much he wants her. Wants _them_. And maybe because he's about to die, he's ok with admitting that he wants Beth Greene more than he's ever wanted anything his whole life.

"Fuck!" he can't help it and he shouts it out, at nothing in particular. The walkers moan and gurgle in response and he eyes them cooly, angrily.

Fuckers.

Dirty, smelly fuckers.

He reaches for his knife. May as well get this over with at least. May as well end this. Give him something to do anyway while he waits for old fairy lightfoot to show itself and stop flitting around the room like a fucking junebug on steroids.

He thinks he'll just make it quick for both of the walkers, a short, sharp jab to the head. Nothing fancy. Daryl Dixon is done with fancy.

_Or you know, you could use what you have little brother, _says Merle. _I mean, I ain't saying your idea ain't grand, but there's a move here. If you weren't so whipped you'da seen it._

Yeah, trust Merle, to see it. Trust Merle to see the manipulation. The _angle_.

It's good though. Easy. Uncomplicated.

Enough with the carrot. Time to use the stick.

He turns away from the security of the wall at his back, sheathing the knife again. He's slow, deliberate, knows he's being watched, as he exposes his back, to whatever's waiting. He wants to cover his nose but he doesn't.

"Ok Sunshine," he calls taking a step to the bed, lowering the crossbow so that it's aimed at the male walker's forehead.

A killshot.

An easy one.

"You come out now or one of your friends is gonna get a bolt through the head," he drawls, putting as much redneck as he can into his voice. "Come on, I can see you tried to keep 'em nice and comfortable here. Must mean somethin' to you."

The silence is his only answer. It was a gamble anyway, hoping that whoever is looking after them was like Hershel, unable to let go, unable to accept the inevitable. It's odd but maybe because he's bit, he doesn't actually have that fear boiling over in his belly any more. Like somehow now that the worst has happened he's got his swagger back. Found a semblance of place again, of himself. That's not to say everything's hunky dory. This situation he's put himself in is beyond fucked up. The resulting situation for Beth even worse no matter how this goes down. But in a way it's a relief. The other shoe's dropped and now he just has to find a way to wear it.

"Ok," he says conversationally as he takes aim. "My daddy always told me warning shots were a waste of arrows."

That was true, he did. He also used to say "If you're gonna shoot, don't talk" but Daryl chooses to ignore that as he eases his finger onto the trigger.

He waits a moment, like he taught Beth. Finger on the trigger, square your hips, take a breath and exhale as you squeeze.

And that's when he feels movement behind him, a footfall gliding over the filthy carpet, soft, dainty almost. A chill runs down his spine, tickling his bones, his sinew, his muscle.

He holds still. Dead still, even as the hair rises on the back of his neck, as every nerve ending tingles.

The smell, musty, dank, hits him at the same time as the voice.

It's low. Cracked. Female.

"Stop. Stop please."

He freezes, blood turning to ice as he stands there. Oozing walkers in front of him, God knows what behind him.

_Swing and shoot, _shouts Merle.

_If you're gonna shoot, don't talk, _says his old man.

Yeah, funny old man, funny.

_Good advice and you know it,_ Merle whispers.

Yeah, it is, but he ain't gonna take any of it.

Instead, he moves the bow slightly, a gesture of goodwill more than anything else because he can still get a headshot from this angle.

"I'm going to turn around now," he says. "And I ain't gonna hurt you. But if you try anything I'm gonna shoot and I'm a good shot. Between you and your friends here, someone will get it."

None of the last part is true. Ain't no way he can shoot and turn and hit the mark at the same time, but he just hopes whatever is standing behind him doesn't know it.

_If you swing right, you can get her, _says Merle.

_Right between the eyes, _says his old man.

_Find out if she's bit,_ says his Ma, _before you do anything._

Funny, that's the first time he's considered that. Finding out. The actual possibility that he could make it out alive, that he might be able to go back to Beth and stay, not unscarred, not untainted, just alive.

A spark of hope. And that pretty much kills him on the spot. Because as he said, Dixon and hope… those two just don't go together.

For the millionth time he curses himself for coming inside here. Was no good reason to do it. Really no good reason. A teenager on a drunken dare to piss in the headmaster's hot tub or snap polaroids of Junie Day through her fancy-ass Roswell windows while she blow dried her red hair in nothing but a slip that didn't cover her ass. He'd never done it though. That was the crowd Merle ran with, not him. He'd always been a loner, always on the outside, the periphery. A bit like Beth when he thinks about it.

He turns.

His heart breaks.

And he almost wants to die.

XXX

It's not a rat, not a monster, not a demon. Nothing of the sort. It's a girl, or what once could have called itself a girl. Small, waifish, terrifying and heart-breaking. It's bad of him, he knows, but the first thing he does is ask if she's bit, even though he should ask why she's so thin and so frail and so filthy. Why she smells worse than the dead. Why she looks like one of them even though she's not.

He expects a yes, maybe a show of her bite, a glimpse of feverish eyes. But she shakes her head, tells him no in that strange weak, raspy voice. He plays the beam of his flashlight over her to be sure and she seems to wither under it, as if this has happened before. As if she's been scrutinised under harsh lights by scary men on cold windy nights prior to this one.

She ain't bit. He makes her pull up her sleeves, turn around to check her back but isn't about to ask her to undress so decides to believe her when she assures him that she's not infected, despite how she looks, despite the smell of her. He tries not to let the relief force him to his knees. He only just succeeds. They do buckle though, buckle hard and fast and the thought of seeing Beth again and not having to leave her, maybe getting to hold her again, lay a kiss, gentle or not so gentle, against her lips. Maybe stop being so nervous and jangly all the time.

The girl is youngish. Maybe a little older than Beth, although Beth has become timeless to him of late so he can't be sure. She's small too. Short, shorter than Beth and skinnier. Some tight skin wrapped around bone. And she's filthy, covered in dirt and grime, hair matted and greasy. Her clothes though, they don't look bad. Unbroken black jeans, a heavy black sweater, thick socks on her feet.

She's trembling though but it ain't from the cold. And her breath whistles out of her in a throaty hiss which scares the shit out of him. She breaks his heart. She's so small and so frail and so frightened. He wonders how long she's been here, how she's survived. Looking at the walkers he can only guess that before they turned they were her only source of protection. He suddenly wishes he'd found her before, when they lived at the prison. When they could have taken her in, maybe taken her two friends too.

As an act of goodwill, he lowers the crossbow and asks if they can sit down. She nods silently and shifts to the couch, her movements oddly graceful. He hesitates for a second wondering if he should actually make good on his suggestion before moving to the chair, the coffee table dividing them, the noise of the two bound walkers echoing in his ears.

He takes a moment to observe her as she fidgets with her cuffs, stares at her socks. He glances back at the bed at the grisly dried bloody writing above it. It's not hard to figure out what happened here, the question though is when. The question is how long has she lived here caring for the undead after the scourge of Joe and Len, Dan, Harley and Tony washed over this house, this home. How long does he have to get home? To get Beth and get back on the road? Will she even go with him? He thinks she will in the end if he insists, but she'll put up a fight. A fight he stands every chance of losing.

_Thought you weren't nobody's bitch,_ says Merle.

Yeah, he's Beth's bitch. He's ok with it too actually he realises all of a sudden. More than ok. There are worse things than being Beth Greene's bitch.

_Pussy,_ says Merle.

But he's ok with that too.

He puts the crossbow down on the floor next to him, slowly, deliberately, making sure she sees him and then he holds out his hands, palms upwards.

"I'm Daryl," he says. Seems a good enough place to start. Polite, unintrusive, like the old world. Who knows maybe he could have sat here, alongside Beth, in another life sipping ice tea and nibbling on fancy ass sandwiches. Fitting in. Yeah, that's a joke, Daryl Dixon with his threadbare shirts and his scarred back, his knobbly knees and scruffy hair, sitting here, engaging in polite conversation, maybe discussing politics or theatre.

Who's he kidding? He didn't know how to do that in the old world any more than the new. He starts to wonder what life would have been like with a normal family but stops himself before he falls down that rabbit hole.

This ain't remotely the time.

He glances back at the girl. She eyes him, brow furrowing, as if she's worried he's trying to trick her.

"Beatrice," she tells him and for a moment he forgets that he introduced himself."People call … called me Bessie."

The feeling of _deja vu_ comes fast, unexpected, and briefly he's overwhelmed in a memory he can't fathom, an image he can't see, a sound he can't hear and it scares him on a primal level he can't even begin to explain and threatens to suck him in, down, away and out to sea. His skin prickles with gooseflesh. And his stomach lurches uncomfortably.

Enough, he tells himself, enough of this nonsense, this fear, this worry. Not everything has to mean something. Not everything is about him. In fact so little of it is about him.

He can figure it out later, he can figure out this puzzle, but not now, not in this dank room, walkers chorusing in the background, the smell of death everywhere, this waif - this urchin - in front of him, feral and wild and ready to tear him apart should be put on foot wrong.

_Scared of a girl?_ Asks Merle.

Yeah, he's scared of a girl. Damn stupid not to be. All the girls he knows are fucking scary.

She picks at her sleeves and he takes her in. The filth, the fear, the way she trembles with every move he makes. The haunted expression, mouth and teeth too big for her emaciated head. And suddenly he feels bad for coming in here, invading her space, trespassing into her home and frightening her. Even the anger at the tight pain in his arm ebbs. This is on him. All of it.

Their eyes meet. Blue. Blue as Beth's and his gut clenches to imagine this could be her in another life. She doesn't look like Beth though and he's grateful for that. Really fucking grateful. And he feels like an asshole, a really fucking big asshole. And when she bites her lip in anticipation of his next move, he's suddenly at a loss, not sure what to do, what to say. He's not even sure he wants to take this on. Not sure he can take her on, her and her baggage, her pain, her history, her walkers. This entire situation is so fucked up that none of his million questions make sense, no matter what the answers are.

But then she starts to speak, and her voice is cold, emotionless.

"That's Frank and Nolly," she points to the bed where the walkers spit and groan and stink. "Well her name's Leonora but I always called her Nolly. She's my sister, he's my big brother."

_(I miss my big brother Shawn. He was always so annoying and overprotective)_

Leonora.

That memory pulls at him again, evading his racing mind by a hair's breadth and the sound he makes in the back of his throat is non-committal.

She nods though. Short and sharp. Businesslike, like he's got it. Like he understands. But her eyes shimmer and her muscles tense and he's suddenly scared she's going to leap across the table and take a bite out of him again.

And as if it was waiting for it's moment the wound pulses angrily. He glances at it, blood dripping off his fingertips, crusting around his already dirty nails to stain the carpet like hazy brown dye. The walkers hiss and he knows they can smell it. One of the big downsides of living in a world where the dead walk, your chances of being wounded are higher and your chances of being sniffed out because of that wound almost a certainty.

"You better not be bit girl," he says gruffly.

"I'm not," she answers. He grunts in response and she seems to cave into herself drawing away from him, eyes darting to the crossbow and then to the knife -Beth's knife - at his hip.

"I ain't gonna hurt you," he tells her again but he can see she doesn't believe him. And suddenly he wishes more than anything that Beth was here. She'd know what to do, what to say. If there's one thing Beth knows it's how to gentle people, how to temper them, how to hold them up when they're falling down. Yeah, he knows. He knows all too well. He thinks suddenly that he never thanked her, never told her how much what she did at the cabin meant to him. Never told her that she kept him going even when he knew he couldn't. He ain't gonna waste time any more, ain't gonna bottle those feelings away, ain't gonna even try. This hiding in plain sight thing that he does with his emotions is for the birds. Beth _knows_. He knows she does.

But all these resolutions aside - god, who'd have thought it was New Year for Daryl Dixon?- he knows she'd be able to draw this girl - this Bessie - out, take her in, make her feel safe. Not like him. Him with his gruffness, his rage, his tough edges and his harsh mouth. What's a nobody redneck know about this anyway? He ain't a friend, he ain't on her side. Hell, he's more enemy than ally at this point.

"You can't have them you know. Not again," she says. "You can't 'claim' them. They ain't yours. Neither am I."

And it's like she's reading his mind. Dunno why that's a surprise though. Beth does it all the time. Does it so well he wonders if somewhere there's a teleprompter broadcasting his thoughts to her. Didn't realise he was so damn obvious.

"I ain't claiming nothin'," he tells her gently.

But either she doesn't hear him or it's not enough because she's suddenly standing and her voice is loud and shrill and the walkers gurgle hungrily at the sound.

"You're not going to do it again. I won't let you."

She's already across the room before he's managed to stop her, quick and nimble, scuttling away like some unwelcome, but evasive spider that you know is living under your dresser but you can never seem to quite catch to toss outside. Or squash. As the feeling takes you.

"Bessie, wait," he says, standing as she hops onto the bed, balancing herself expertly between the tied legs of the two walkers, avoiding the groping arm of the male and ignoring the ravenous hisses they make.

"Bessie, come away there," he says even as he can't bear to look at the bloodied writing above her head. "I ain't gonna hurt you."

She kneels, wedging herself between the rotten limbs, nesting almost and he has a grisly thought that this is how she's been sleeping, passing her nights curled up between the putrefied flesh that was once her family. No wonder she smells so bad. It ain't just a case of not having washed for months, the stink of death and decay is in her skin, in her hair, in her breath. He wonders if it could ever come out, or if she herself is more walker than human already. Bile rises in the back of his throat, bitter and intense and he needs to look away, shut his eyes for a moment while the disgust passes through him.

"Why are you here?" she asks, shuffling down, curling her arms around rotted ankles, ignoring the flailing hand near her hair.

He has to admit it's a good question. One he's not sure he'll ever be able answer. No matter what happens.

"You come back for more?" she asks. "Why don't you just leave?"

He wants to pull her away but he knows if he takes a step towards her, she'll bolt, she might bite and there's been all too much biting today already. So he just shakes his head.

"Bessie, I didn't do this to you. Not you, not Frank, not Lanora."

"Leonora," she corrects and suddenly that memory, that untapped knowledge clawing at the edges of his clouded brain springs to the fore, punching him in the gut as hard as if it was Joe, Dan and Harley and their goddamned tyre iron.

_(Tony, imagine it was Lenore. Or what if it was Betty?)_

He hadn't thought much of it at the time, thought maybe Joe was referring to a dead wife or sister, a girlfriend. Fact was, he'd been too buzzed to worry about, too concerned with getting Beth as far away as he could. Too worried about his arm and the blood clouding his vision and Beth's dead eyes. Never thought about who and why of it, the way Tony's jaw had hardened and how Dan's hands had twitched between his spread legs. They weren't talking about Before. Weren't talking about a time where they were good men, men with homes and kids and families and maybe a labrador or two in the yard. Maybe they never were men like that, probably not judging from what he'd seen Len try with Beth.

Those fuckers had done this, hurt this girl, tortured her family, killed them and left them to reanimate under the fucking logo of blood on the wall. Fuckers couldn't even remember their goddamned names right. Couldn't even be bothered to know who it was they were raping and pillaging.

He knows the guilt he feels is unfounded, knows he shouldn't feel this way, knows it's not on him, it'll never be on him. But he can't help it. He wants to apologise but he knows he can't, because he thinks that'll scare her more and that hand is so very close to her, almost touching her hair.

"How long ago were they here Bessie?" he asks mouth dry, both dreading and craving the answer.

She frowns and he wonders if her mind has run off somewhere safe, if she's checked out, if he can even trust any answer she gives him.

"It was hot," she says eventually. "It was hot the last time you were here."

"It wasn't me Bessie," he says softly. "I promise it wasn't me."

_But it coulda been,_ says his old man, _coulda so easily been you. You and your Dixon blood. Girl can't even tell the difference between you and them. She sees it. Why can't you boy?_

_You got away from it,_ says Beth. _You did._

"I ain't like them," he tells her.

"Nolly wouldn't let them hurt me," she says, her voice a whisper, so soft he strains to hear it. "Nolly said to take her, not me. So they did. And I hid. And I only came out when they were gone."

The walker's two remaining fingers touch her back and Daryl breathes in sharply as he has visions of her being ripped into the hungry maw, but something much worse happens. She shrugs slightly, so that the hand moves and then turns to take it in her own. Holding it tightly, rubbing her thumb across the dead palm and whispering words he can't quite hear. Words that sound tender and secretive and loving. The walker hisses, jerking towards her but she pats its belly and makes a noise that sounds like she's shushing it.

"It was hot," she says again as if this is a new thought. "Summer."

He hates himself for the relief that rushes through him. That means it was at least five months ago, round the time the prison fell. They're long, long gone or so he hopes. He's not sure how long they followed him and Beth once they got the car, it couldn't have been far, they drove for hours, no way they could have tracked them. Guys couldn't track for shit anyway.

"Don't you remember?" She asks. "Don't you remember what you did?"

"I didn't do this," he says. "I wasn't here."

"Where were you?" She interrupts and curls herself grotesquely around her brother resting her head on his belly, letting that free hand jerk in and out of her filthy matted hair.

"Bessie, come away there please," he asks.

"Why?" She says snuggling closer. "Frank never hurt me. Men like you hurt me."

He has to admit, she has a point.

A very good point.

So he doesn't bother to tell her again that he won't hurt her. Knows it's futile.

"Where were you?" She asks again. "Where were you when everyone went away?"

He swallows.

"Were you with them?" she waves at the wall.

_May as well have been,_ says his old man.

"No," he says eventually. "I was with people, good people. We found a place, a safe place. least for a while."

"And now? Where's your safe place now?"

Beth's name is out of his mouth before he can stop himself. Because no, it's not that little house, number seven, with its cerulean flower box, it's not a moonshine cabin or an old funeral home. It's none of those things. His safe place is Beth. Beth is his home.

"Who is Beth?" she asks, suddenly perking up, interested in his story.

"Beth is …" he starts.

_Your girl,_ says his Ma.

_Your piece of ass, _says his old man.

_Yours, _says Beth.

"... she's Beth. She sings and she's gentle, but she's tough as nails. She…"

She's sitting up now. She's taken Nolly's hand now as well. He's briefly reminded of his Ma during one of her religious episodes, when she'd make them hold hands and say grace around the table, thanking the Lord for his bounty. His bounty. What a joke. Some roadkill and a few grisly potatoes they grew in the back garden. Most of the time it made them sick because the meat was already rancid. But his Ma made them say it, even while his old man screamed at her that she was a dumb bitch, a whore, a cunt and that the Lord had closed his gates to her a long time ago. Closed his gates to all of them. The Lord had no call for Dixons. But they'd sit there, hands linked, while she prayed over bad food and thanked the Lord for all their blessings. He wonders if Bessie is religious, if she's thanked the Lord for leaving her brother and sister with her, leaving her to care for their living corpses.

"Are you good to her, this Beth? Or do you hurt her?"

He swallows, his mouth dry. "I take care of her, she takes care of me."

"I know how men like you take care of girls,"

"No Bessie, you don't," he's surprised by the certainty he feels when he says this. Surprised by his complete and utter belief that what he has with Beth is wholly good and what he feels for her is real and decent and right. It's liberating. And once again, terrifying.

She's not so sure though and she watches him warily.

"You'd like her," he says. "She'd like you too."

He's not sure why he's saying this. Makes him nervous that his mind has jumped to a time where she could meet Beth and get to know her. Makes him realise that in his head he's already thinking of taking her back with him, finding a way to make it work for the three of them. It's nuts because he has no idea how he'd keep any of them safe. How he could trust Bessie - feral and starved and out of her head - around Beth? Around him? Where they'd find enough food, enough meds, enough anything to keep three of them going.

And yet he finds he doesn't care. Because he knows he can't just leave her here, living like an animal among the dead, waiting for Joe and his gang to come back and finish the job. He'll take her on, he knows he will, he's always taken the lame dogs on.

He thinks of Layla again, Layla the mangy mutt that she was. How Merle had laughed when he caught Daryl feeding her. Told him he was wasting his time. She'd never be a friend. Beaten once too many times, kicked too hard, starved too often. Mutt would take his arm off one day as easily as she'd lay gentle licks on his fingers. She hadn't though. She'd become his friend when she was around. Would wag her tail when she saw him and follow him into the woods when he went hunting. She was quiet, quiet and loyal and good and sometimes he'd sit at the stream, grilling his catch over a small fire and she'd rest her head on his leg. She was wary at first, but he hadn't pushed her and one day she just relaxed next to him, nuzzled his hand and lay quiet and still while he shared some roasted squirrel with her, her bites for too dainty for the hunger he knew she was feeling.

Who knows, maybe Bessie could be his friend too, him and Beth's. God knows they could all use one right now, Bessie most of all.

He's telling her this before he can stop himself, inviting her to come and live with them, telling her about the eight houses and how she can choose where she wants to stay and how he and Beth will look after her, she'll have running water and food to eat. He thinks it's a good speech, a convincing one, is already making plans about how he'll fix the water in one of the other houses and dividing their supplies in his head. But when he's done she's still eyeing him warily.

"I'm not going anywhere with you," she says. "You can't claim me. I won't let you."

And suddenly he's deflated. Completely deflated. But it makes sense. Why would she? She thinks he's like Joe and Len and Tony. She thinks he's one of them, Lord knows, he looks the part. He wonders if this is the apocalypse version of listening to your mom's advice not to go anywhere with strangers. He can't blame her. She's wise. Very wise.

He wonders if Beth could change her mind. He knows that when he tells her she'll want to come looking for this lost girl, want to save her and look after her. Because that's Beth. She's like him, taking in the lame dogs, the lost boys, the feral cats. Hell, she took him in. Took him in when he sure as shit didn't deserve it after the way he treated her.

He remembers holding her pressed to his chest, his muscled arm gripping her tightly and forcing his crossbow on her, forcing her to hold it and shoot it. He'd been so angry, so afraid, so hurt, he'd taken it all out on her. He hadn't been kidding when he said he was a dick when he was drunk, but the fact was he'd been a dick sober too. She hadn't deserved that, she'd never deserved that, orphaned girl that she was.

He'd tried to apologise once, that night after they ran off into the woods like two naughty little pixies come to cause chaos and then leave again before they were caught. Tried to tell her he was sorry for everything, the harsh words, the manhandling, the treating her like crap, but she'd told him he had nothing to be sorry for, nothing to make up to her. It was done. Over. And they could dwell in the past or pick up the pieces and start again. They'd both chosen the second option. And there was a time when he thought that was the point he'd started to fall for her. But it wasn't true because it was impossible to pinpoint a moment, whether it was before or after. All he knew was that by the time they got to the funeral home, he was ready to accept Beth as being his life, ready to accept an existence that only involved her forever. And he was looking forward to it. It wasn't a matter of not having a choice - they didn't - it was a matter of being given exactly what you need even if it isn't quite what you thought you wanted.

Beth changed his mind, no reason she couldn't change Bessie's too.

"I could come back," he tells her. "Bring Beth with, leave the two of you to talk. You could see if you trust her, make a choice then."

She seems to consider this, biting her lips and frowning, completely oblivious to the dead hands in her own. She hushes the walkers distractedly and they flail harder at their bonds and he sees the restraint on Frank's other arm start to give.

"What about Nolly?" She asks.

"What about Nolly?"

"Can she come with?"

"Nolly's dead," he says regretting it almost instantly.

"She's not," Bessie answers indignantly. "Look."

She lets go of Frank and dangles her hand above Nolly's mouth. The walker snaps and gurgles as her fingers almost brush the rotten lips and the yellowed teeth within.

"Bessie, stop," he says taking a step towards her.

"If she was dead, she couldn't move, couldn't eat, couldn't shout," she says hopping over the body and landing on the floor with a small thud.

She touches the walker's face and its broken teeth snap at her, black tongue emerging as it pulls on its restraints.

"She'll be back to normal soon. She looked after me, I'll look after her," her voice is loud, shrill and it fills the room, the house, the world like an alarm. A signal for all the walkers, all the broken men, all the dead to come and see, come and live, come and play, come and eat her choicest fruits.

"Bessie, stop," he says. "Stop."

"No, you need to see that Nolly is fine, she just needs medicine, she just need someone to wash her and feed her and care for her. You just need to see. They need to see. Beth needs to see," she's shrieking now. Voice no longer cracked and weak from lack of use. No longer raspy.

"Bessie, it's fine," he tells her. "We just need to work something out."

"There's nothing to work out," she screams, running her hands over the walkers face, touching her hair which comes out in clumps and sticks to Bessie's fingers. "I'm not leaving them. You can't just come in here and take them away. You can't take me away. I'm not yours."

And she's right. She's not his. There _is_ nothing to work out. Not really. Not any more. She'll never leave here. This is where she wants to be. She has her family, the same way he has his and neither of them will ever leave. Ever.

"Why are you here?" she shouts. "Why did you come? What do you want?"

That question. The one he can't answer, the one he'll never really know. But she's shouting again and all he wants is for her to stop.

"A bracelet," he tells her. "I wanted to find a bracelet for Beth."

He guesses that's as good a reason as any, probably the closest he has to the truth either way. That damned opal bracelet at the forefront of his mind. His Ma's jewelry on Beth's wrist. As it should be. As it must be. What normal people did. Normal happy families. People without the bullshit, the drama, the fuck ups that the Dixons had. He almost wants to laugh out loud when he thinks of what would happen if he'd brought home a girl like Beth in the old world, what Merle would have said, what his old man would have said. If his Ma would have roused herself, left Jim Beam behind in the bedroom for a few minutes to come and meet her. Even worse is imagining what would happen when the situation was reversed. Him sitting in Hershel's pristine lounge, Maggie and Shawn to the one side, Annette to the other while they appraised his torn clothes, his dirty boots. While they wondered what someone like him was doing sniffing around their pretty little blond daughter. It's so ridiculous though, to imagine Beth and him in another life. It would never happen, could never happen. Is it bad, he wonders, bad that the world has to end to give you what you want? Maybe that means you're wanting the wrong thing in the first place.

"I'm sorry Bessie," he says all of a sudden. "I shouldn't have come."

"Get out," she says. "Get out now. If you're not like them, you'll leave."

She's right. She doesn't know how right she is. He's not like them, he's nothing like them.

But he can't leave, can't leave her here like this.

"Bessie, you change your mind, you leave something hanging on the door outside. Beth and I will come and fetch you."

She looks horrified. Horrified as if he's just told her he's going to chop of her arm and beat her to death with it.

"Get out," she shouts again. "I don't want you. You or Beth."

"Ok, ok," he holds up his hands. "I'm leaving."

"Just go!" She screams, suddenly rushing towards him and he thinks she's going to bite him again but she grabs something from the dresser and shoves it hard into his hands, pushing him backwards at the same time.

"Go!" she shrieks make the walkers snap and groan and he wants to throw up because he knows he's going to leave her here. Leave her in this mess, with the dead. Knows that she can't be with him and Beth, doesn't want to be with him and Beth.

She beats him into the passageway and he stumbles over the tapestry again, holding into the wall for support, not wanting to go down under her blows. But her screams are loud and high and keening and they shoot through his head until they're the only sound in the world. Until all he knows his her voice, her smell and the feel of her fists.

"Stop," he says but isn't sure she hears above the sound of her own voice as she shoves him again and retreats back into the hazy bedroom, where she holds her arm above Nolly's mouth.

Abruptly her screams stop, but the walkers are riled up. Moaning and biting, teeth snapping millimetres away from her flesh.

"Leave now, or I'll let her bite me."

He registers how calm her voice is seconds before he understands her words. She's panting but calm, steady.

"I'll do it," she says. "I swear to god I'll do it."

She will.

He doesn't doubt it.

He nods, a moment passing between them. And if he wasn't crazy and she wasn't crazy maybe he'd call it "understanding". Or maybe he'd call it "respect".

He backs down the stairs, avoiding the broken glass, holds his breath through the foul smelling longue, debris crunching under his feet, a trail of his blood on the carpet before he runs out onto the porch, into the night, drawing big gasps of air into his lungs as if he hasn't breathed in years.

He doesn't linger, he can't. It's too much to just stand there knowing the hell of shit and piss and death that's behind him. It's seconds before he's back in the car and hurtling through the night, blood pounding in his ears, another deep-seated ache in his arm dribbling blood all over the car.

His hands shake on the wheel and his bloody grip is tenuous at best and somehow he feels both as if he's been reborn and is nothing more than a corpse in the ground. He curses himself, him and his ideas, him and his curiosity. Because now, now he knows that she's there. Living there alone with the dead, hungry and filthy and he also knows he can't go back, can face it again. Can't risk it and it feels like a failure all over again. Another Sophia. Another Merle. Another Beth.

_You didn't fail Beth, _his Ma says. _Stop saying you did._

But he did fail Beth. He failed her so many times, he wonders how many he has left before she cuts her losses. Before she understands that how she sees him ain't the real him.

_We burnt it down,_ says Beth. _We burnt it down._

She's right. They did. But maybe he really does need her to keep on reminding him sometimes. Maybe he does need to rely on her for something. He decides he's going to ask her for that. Ask her to give him that. And suddenly all he wants is to hold her, tell her he's sorry for going alone, even though he's not, even though he's glad he got the meds she needed. But he _is_ sorry that it upset her. That was the last damn thing he wanted. That from now on they do shit together, none of this going off alone nonsense. Mostly he just wants to see her, show her he's fine, see that she's ok. That there are no bites, no walkers, no claimers and no strange girls hanging around in the dark, ready to claw him to bits.

He swerves to avoid a lone walker and has a ridiculous vision of it waving its fist at him for nearly taking it down and that's when he realises his breathing is erratic and his entire body is trembling and he knows he needs to get himself under control, catch his breath, stop his heart from carving a throbbing passage out of his chest, fight back the red fog in his head which is nothing like the red fog he sees when he's around Beth.

He stops the car. Just for a moment, he tells himself. Just for a second until he can breathe again.

He kills the engine. It's still dark but it feels like it'll be dawn soon. He can't remember how long he's been away. It feels like seconds and hours at the same time. Minutes and days. Weeks and decades. Time and no time at all. And he hates it because he doesn't know if Beth's been waiting for him or she's managed to go back to sleep or if she'll still be sitting in her chair nursing a cup of tea and a sterner expression. He thinks of Bessie and the way she held her brother and sister's hands, like they were praying. Praying or playing. Playing over the dead. No, _presiding_ over the dead. A wave of nausea rolls through his body, right from his toes to his gut and up his throat, to the back of his mouth, before it rolls back down again. Down into his bowels, down to the soles of his feet. The tide comes again and he squeezes his eyes shut, gripping the steering wheel until it passes and he can take breathy gulps of air. Air that tastes like air and not death. Until he can breathe like a man and not like a fish out of water, until his vision clears and he can see purple sky and hear the wind and feel the cold of the night even inside the car.

He has an insane vision of his Ma stroking his hair, whispering to him, soothing him. She's sober, unbruised, her eyes bright and her skin smooth and pale. He knows it's not a memory. He has no recollections of his Ma unblemished but somehow it settles him, pacifies him.

Calmer, he opens his eyes and looks at the seat next to him where he shoved his crossbow on top of the backpack. He sees a glint beneath one of his bolts and remembers how Bessie pushed something into his hands before he retreated out of her hell.

_Forgive me my tresspasses..._

He reaches across the seat and picks it up.

It's a bracelet.

_...__as I forgive them that trespass against me._

Platinum, delicate and adorned with citrines that glint even in the dim light. The metal work embossed with delicate filigree. It's beautiful. Much nicer than that opal bracelet of his Ma's. Probably worth more too. He turns it over in his hands. It's solid and for a second he imagines it on Beth's arm. He wonders if she'd wear it over her scar or on her other wrist. Maybe she won't care so much any more. Now. Now that they are past all that.

_(I never cut my wrists for attention)_

He was such an ass. Such a fucking ass. And she was so fucking good to him. Good when he didn't deserve it. Good when he was bad.

It's not too late to make it up to her. It can't be.

Maybe this is a start.

There's blood on two of the stones. He rubs at it, but it's dry and hard. And then he wonders why he's bothering.

He thinks of giving it to her. Thinks of what she'll say, if she'll like it. Thinks of how it doesn't look anything like his Ma's bracelet.

He opens the car window and tosses it out onto the street. He hears it fall and roll but he doesn't look. He ain't giving Beth anything tainted like that. He doesn't care if he needs to spend the rest of his life looking, he'll find something worthy of his Ma's opals to give to her. Not some piece of bling stolen from a house of horrors. Not an easy find of gaudy stones that don't suit her in any way.

It ain't right.

It ain't her.

He drives off, hands still shaking, but not as badly. He tells himself it'll all be fine. He tells himself he'll come back and drop some food on the steps for Bessie. He tells himself that Joe and the rest won't loop back here.

Yeah, he tells himself a lot of things.

At the house, he has to force himself to bolt the gate and make sure it's done right, make sure it can't be broken, make sure all their makeshift alarms are in place. Make sure it's safe, safe and secure and unbreachable.

A part of him wishes that Beth was waiting for him on the steps like she sometimes does, but he knows that's stupid. It's freezing, she's sick and it's the middle of the night or something. Yeah. Something.

It's selfish. And he ain't selfish.

Another minute won't kill him.

Although it just might.

"Beth!" he shouts as he takes the steps two at a time and hurls himself through the door, trailing dirt and gore across the tiled entrance, hoping to find her wrapped in a blanket on the couch reading by candlelight.

The candles are there but there's no sign of her.

"Beth!" he calls again, dropping the crossbow and backpack on the ground and making his way into the lounge. Into the light. Into the warmth. It feels like coming home. It feels like how coming home should feel.

He says her name one more time and the panic wells up in him, suddenly sure she is gone.

Again.

Again and again and again. Doomed to repeat this cycle over and over again. Over and over until he dies or goes insane. But he's already insane. So all that's left is death.

But there she is coming down the stairs, hair wet, skin still dewy from the shower, absently making to tie the baby blue terry cloth robe at her waist. Oblivious. Oblivious and beautiful and warm and everything he needs.

She stops when she sees him, blue eyes big and sparkling and terrifying, the ties of the robe falling from her hands. She's only wearing a very thin vest and a pair of panties underneath and even he can see nearly every curve, every dent, every crease he barely notices.

"Beth," his voice is cracked and doesn't sound like his, but that's ok because her name doesn't sound like hers.

She takes him in for a second, and he wonders what she sees. His bloodied hands, the tremors, wild eyes? His darkness? His depravity?

His lust?

"Daryl," she says, hurrying down the stairs, eyes wide, "what…?"

But he doesn't give her the chance to speak as the relief washes over him in a wave that threatens to drown him, leaves him gasping again.

He doesn't remember making the decision to go to her. He remembers how his fingers flexed at his sides, how enormous her eyes were, how the candlelight hit her just so. But the decision? That's not there, not there anymore than the decision to breathe, for his heart to beat, for his insides to turn to a hot mess and his skin to burn under her gaze.

His hands are on her, fingers digging into her hips, into the band of flesh where her vest and panties don't quite meet, and he's backing her into wall, his mouth hot on hers, his tongue demanding as he forces it between her lips, sliding it across her teeth, not caring that he's catching whatever it is that she has, not caring that he can tell there's a rough cough hiding in the back of her throat.

She hesitates for a moment, her body rigid and taut. But then her eyes flutter and close as she opens her mouth to him, lips pliable and soft under his; skin smooth and warm as her body seems to mould to his, takes on his shape, takes on his name, takes on his doubts and ghosts and demons as he leans, hard - so very hard -, against her. And it feels like she's kissing the fear out of him, kissing the rage out of him, kissing the devil out of him, even as she fans the flames of the fire inside him.

She's not gentle when her hands find their way into his hair, not in the slightest as she grips fiercely against his scalp, as she holds him fast and tight so that he can't move. Her tongue strokes against his, warm and wet and he realises suddenly that her need is almost as great as his. That it's been at least a good five months for her, since Zach…

He pushes the thought away as his palms move from her hips to the satin skin of her smooth belly, fingers ghosting over the dent of her navel before sliding under the robe to rest in the small of her back, where her skin prickles and he can feel her trembling through the too many layers of clothing between them.

Somehow, he can't remember how because, in this more familiar - although no less comforting - red fog of his mind he can't concentrate on anything but the feel of her, the scent of her, the taste of her tongue in his mouth, but her arms are out of the robe and it's lying in a puddle on the floor, touching his boots. Distractedly, he kicks it out the way and wedges his knee between her legs. The movement jolts her and she heaves a little against him moaning into his mouth. And then her hands are on his shoulders pushing hard at the fleece jacket. The sheep, he remembers she calls it "the sheep" although that's a ridiculous thing to remember right now, when her mouth is so hot and her body is so soft.

He drops his hands from her so that the jacket can fall, struggling out of it, cursing into her mouth and making her giggle when his elbow gets stuck. It's not even on the floor when he grabs her thigh, hiking her leg over his hip and moving himself into that soft and sacred place that is all Beth and all heat and all desire. He's too tall and she's too short to hold this position for long but he doesn't care as he digs his fingers into her, knowing he's being a little too rough, knowing it shouldn't be like this and he should take things slower, not be so ungentle with her, not be so demanding, but she's grasping at him too, his hair, his shoulders, the rough muscle of his biceps, her hands eventually snaking under his shirt, reaching for his belt buckle, fingers firm but soft, touching him where he's firm but certainly not soft.

He groans, lifting her completely, wedging her between his body and the wall, pressing his weight against her as she locks her ankles firmly behind him.

His eyes flicker to her neck, her pale shoulder, the thin strap of her vest, as he licks at her teeth, her lips, her tongue, trying to taste all of her at once, the sweetness of her mouth above the wild heat of her below. He wants to eat her, eat her from the inside out and then again from the outside in, burrow inside all her wetness, her softness until all he knows is the shape of her, the smell of her, the taste of her.

He's a little surprised by how matched they are as she kisses him back, how brazenly she sucks on his tongue, how it feels like she wants to swallow him whole even as he drowns in her.

Doesn't know why he thought she'd be timid though, why she'd be reticent. Maybe it has something to do with being afraid of unleashing the beast he keeps inside him, but she matches him measure for measure, stroke for stroke as the bare skin of her belly brushes against him, as she forces herself closer to him and he can feel the hardness of her nipples through his sweater. The desire to take her immediately, right here, right now, with the cold wall against her back and the blood on his hands is fierce and solid within him. So fierce that it makes him want to weep, so solid that it makes him want to scream. And he wishes he could slow it all down.

But he can't.

He doesn't know how.

He never did.

And with the smooth movement she uses to divest him of his belt, neither does she.

His hand moving from her thigh to her breast is almost instinctual - another decision he doesn't remember making - and when she gasps into his mouth and shivers under his hand, he loses his head, loses his mind, loses his soul.

He pushes closer to her even though that shouldn't be possible, even though he should be suffocating her and her hands are stuck painfully between them. He wants to touch her all at once and not at all. Wants to savour her under his hands and at the same time crawl his fingers over every inch of her so that there's no part of her he doesn't know.

When her hand slips under his waistband, smooth fingers trailing along his abdomen, he knows he'll either come right there like a teenage boy against her or he'll fall to his knees in front of her, supplicant, submissive, content to worship her until the day he dies. He's not ready to do either, so he finds the strength to move his palm from her breast and bat her hands away from his groin. She's not so easily deterred though. And seconds later her hands are back on him one fisting in his hair, the other snaking under his sweater and the vest beneath it, playing across his belly, stroking outwards to his hips and then back again, making his skin prickle and his blood boil.

He tugs the strap off her shoulder, hand falling back to her thigh as he licks his way out of her mouth with long, smooth strokes that somehow seem to both satisfy and subdue her and he trails his tongue across her cheek and then down the smooth line of her neck.

He likes her ragged groan as her head tilts back and her hand starts travelling downwards again. He doesn't push her away when she touches him this time, a gentle brush of her knuckles on his jeans where his erection strains against his zipper, where his arousal is plainer than his emotions.

He takes a moment to rest his forehead against her shoulder, close his eyes, let her touch him, to breathe in that clean smell of her, the perfume of the soap, the perfume of her flesh.

And to believe that they can have this. That he can take her upstairs, lay her out on that bed, that he can have her.

And she can have him.

She could always have him.

That wasn't even a question.

Her hand lingers near his waistband again and it feels like she's waiting for his permission. Feels like she's scared to take the chance again and be rejected.

He ain't going to reject her.

"Daryl…" she whispers and her voice is throaty and deep. And he knows what she's asking. Knows she wants his ok, knows she wants him to guide her. Which means she's out of her fucking mind because he needs more guidance than she'll ever need.

Either way, he bites down gently on her shoulder, sucking briefly at the pale skin and opens his eyes.

Later, he'll tell himself it was because of the small cough she let out at that moment, or the fact that he realised just how cold she must be pushed up mostly naked against the cold wall. Later he'll tell himself it was a decision he came to logically and pragmatically. A good decision, a wise decision. A responsible decision.

It's none of those things.

It's visceral and raw and him getting in his own way. It's the voices in his head and the rage in his heart and the fear in every cell.

But when he glances down at his hand, his hand that's gripping her thigh, his hand that he intends to move to hers and use to guide her fingers to him, all he can see is the roughness of his marked skin, his tattooed flesh against the whiteness of her smooth thigh. The blood from his hand rubbing off on her in a dirty smear.

And he stops.

And suddenly the idea of his marked body on hers seems obscene.

Indecent.

"Daryl," she breathes. "Do you...?"

Her voice trails off. And her hands relax, still. And it's like she's waiting for him to pull away.

And he does.

Harshly.

A few steps backwards and he's nearly flush with front door.

He tries not to look at her, look at her standing there, semi naked. But he can't. She's all legs. Legs and hard nipples and reddened lips. And he knows in that moment she'll take him to her bed, give him her flesh, give him her fucking soul if that's what he wants. He knows he'll take all of it too. Give her back his own. But that ain't a fair trade. Ain't fair at all, because a few pieces of chipped glass ain't a fair trade for diamonds.

_And lead me not into temptation_

"Sorry," he mumbles.

He takes another step back, eyes fixed on the floor.

She doesn't move except for the gentle rise and fall of her chest, her breath almost as ragged as his. He can't look at her. Can't even think if her standing there naked enough that it doesn't matter that she's not. He knows that if he does, it'll be over. He won't resist.

He starts to ask himself why he's resisting but shuts that voice down.

"Are you ok?" She asks and her eyes are on his bloody arm, but he knows she isn't asking about it.

He grunts. Grunts, because he's beast Daryl again. Beast Daryl who has no words. Because he's a dick, because he's a fool. An uneducated piece of white trash who can't keep his fucking hands to himself.

"Daryl..." She starts again and suddenly his head and the house and the whole fucking world is just too goddamned small for this.

To go to Beth Greene you must go with perfect courage.

He manages to tell her the meds are in the backpack before he lets the front door bang behind him as he rushes outside, back into the night, where he belongs, where it's safe, where he can take his chances with the dead rather than the living.

It turns out it's nothing near as dramatic.

He walks through the cold, checking the walls for holes, knowing there are none, knowing because he checked before he went to bed. He checks the gate a few times, the chain, the alarms. They're all fine. Like he knew they were.

For the second time tonight he wants a cigarette. Fiercely. But he doesn't want to go inside any of the houses. He wants to be cold, cold and angry. Cold so that the taste of her freezes on his mouth, numb so that his hands don't remember the feel of her, the shape of her.

He ends up sitting on the porch, chewing on his thumb, biting down. Wanting to draw blood. More blood.

He can hear her inside. She sounds like she's washing dishes which is ridiculous. He wishes she'd go back to bed, go to sleep.

_And then what?_ Asks his Ma. _Then you go inside and then what?_

She's right. Ain't like either of them can leave. Even if they wanted to.

Which he doesn't.

So he sits and he waits and he waits and he sits and he breathes. And he stabs the steps with his knife a few times. And his blood eventually stops running out if him. And he sees the faintest hint of dawn peeking through the night sky. And he knows the day will be as cold as the night.

And he shivers.

He's not surprised when he hears the door open behind him and she comes to sit next to him on the step, leaning against him slightly for a second that warms him, before angling herself away and pulling his bloody arm into her lap.

He chances a glance at her. She's dressed, which ain't exactly a surprise, not like he expected her to come out here in her underwear. Simple sweat pants and a zipped up hoodie, those oversized tatty teddy socks on her feet and he thinks they're cute.

She catches his gaze and gives him a small smile before he looks away, blinking rapidly, wishing she'd go back inside, wishing he didn't have to be near her. Wishing she didn't have to be so goddamn kind and sweet and understanding.

But… but she's Beth.

_Your blue-eyed girl, _says his Ma.

Not now Ma, he thinks resting his head against the railing of the porch. Really Ma, not now.

She rolls his sleeve up slowly and traces the wound as he tries not to curl his fingers against her inner thigh. She doesn't ask how he got the bite, or even if he's infected. And he realises just how much she trusts him in that second, how she knows that if it was a walker bite he'd never have put her in any danger. It makes him feel better and like a bigger dick all at once.

She's brought bandages and antiseptic liquid, a bowl of hot water. She cleans the mark quietly, efficiently, smoothing the dirt and muck out of the gouges. He looks at it. It'll scar.

But what's one more?

He hisses slightly when she applies the antiseptic liquid but she blows on it softly. And his skin prickles under her breath. He bites hard on his lip until he can taste blood. But it does nothing to ease the ache in his groin, in his mouth, in his heart. He looks at her bowed head, the hair she's scraped back into a messy bun, the cool soothing fingers wrapped around his wrist, her pink lips forming a perfect "o" as she eases the pain with the air from her lungs. And he wants to draw her to him. Not like before. Not all fire and passion and the red fog that makes him lose his mind, but just for the comfort of having her next to him, against him. The way she fits him. And he her.

He shakes that thought away. He doesn't fit her, doesn't fit with anyone other than his demons.

She doesn't look at him as she winds the bandage around his arm and tests it for firmness before tying it off tightly and pulling his sleeve down again. She keeps her hand gently on his arm as she moves the the bloodied cloth and antiseptic liquid behind them. And he can't bring himself to move.

And then she settles against him, resting her head on his arm and gripping his fingers in her own. He thinks she turns her head to kiss the ridge of his shoulder and he looks away, blinking tears out of his eyes.

He thought she'd be angry, he thought she'd be hurt. He should know better by now. She's Beth. Always Beth.

It's always been Beth.

They watch the sunrise in silence and he bends his arm awkwardly to hold her head against his shoulder, feeling the cool, yet clammy, skin of her cheek against his palm. It's bleak and cold and he thinks longingly of his jacket inside. But that makes him think of how it got there and he can't do that. Because underneath the embarrassment, underneath the fear and the self sabotage there's that moment where he remembers how sweet and soft she felt under his hands and it makes him want her all the more. So he just keeps his hand on her face, her thigh pressed against his, the smell of her filling him up in the godawful light of the dawn.

The wind picks up again and she coughs softly.

And it's like a cord leading him back to reality.

"Should be inside Beth," he says without looking at her. "It's cold and you need to sleep."

"So do you," she whispers.

He nods, but doesn't move.

"Come," she says, easing away from him and standing up.

It's a moment before he takes her hand and lets her lead him back into the house.

And he follows, because he's powerless not to, because he can't say no, because despite what he tells himself, he wants this. More than anything and he wonders if it's too late now, too late to touch her face, too late to press his lips to hers, too late to get that moment back. They step over his jacket and belt, they ignore her robe. They don't look at the smear of blood against the wall from his hand.

He lets her lead him up the stairs into the bedroom, still lit with candles guttering in their holders, lets her push him onto the bed and then kneel between his legs to pull his boots off. He watches her, not even uncomfortable at this picture they are making of her crouching between his spread knees. He's aroused. And again, he knows she's noticed, but he's too tired, too overwhelmed to care. He doesn't even try to stop her when she pulls his sweater off leaving him in his vest. And then she's pushing him down onto the mattress and for an insane moment he thinks she'll straddle him right then and there. But she doesn't.

Instead she slides in next to him, pulling the blankets up high until they tickle his chin.

"Thanks for the meds," she whispers.

"S'alright."

She's quiet next to him and he chews his bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth and popping it out, while he stares at the invisible patterns on the ceiling.

He knows they should sleep, but he's overtired, and also overstimulated, not just by Beth but by this whole fucking night. He doesn't want to sleep, can't sleep. So he starts talking, telling her about Bessie in halted sentences, keeping his voice low. She lets him. Doesn't interrupt, doesn't ask questions, just waits for him to finish and when he does, when he tells her how he threw that damned bracelet out of the car, he turns to her and reaches across the bed to take her hand, drawing it to his lips and planting a kiss on her knuckles.

She tells him she wants to go back to the house, see Bessie, and he nods because he knew this is what she would want. He tells her he wants to put some food aside, leave it for her, but that they can't go in. Not unless they're invited. And she agrees, brow furrowing slightly when he kisses her hand again.

He wonders if he's gone too far now. If this, this kissing her hand, is presumptuous, as if his earlier kisses weren't. But then she pulls their linked hands away from his mouth and towards hers and presses her lips against his flesh, mouth moving gently over his fingers, the back of his hand, the crook of his thumb, before settling back down against her pillow and using her fingertips to trace the sinew and muscle under his skin in a slow rhythm that she doesn't know has him digging his free hand into the mattress to stay sane.

He thinks she'll say something about Bessie, something about things he should have done, something about how he messed up earlier, but she doesn't.

Instead, she tells him she likes his ink as she outlines the dragon on his arm and then the star on his hand. She says there's something about his tattoos that tell his story, that show her who he really is and that's beautiful, because he's beautiful. And doesn't he know that? Didn't she tell him enough?

And he knows what she's saying, knows she didn't miss the way he looked at her pale thigh and the bloodied marks his stained hands left on her downstairs, knows she didn't miss the reason he pulled away.

"I'm sorry," he whispers and he means it.

"Don't," she tells him, so he doesn't.

Shadows flicker on the walls. She touches his hand, traces the outline of the star one more time and then moves to the heart on his wrist.

"It's beautiful," she says and he suddenly has a desire to show it all to her, all his ink, all his marks, all his scars. She's seen his back, he knows she has, when you live in each other's pockets and it's too dangerous to take a piss by yourself you see things. They'd both tried to be decent about it but he knew she'd seen the one morning when he'd gone to wash himself off in the river, was no way she could have missed it because she was standing right there when he turned around, water lapping at his hips. Neither of them had said anything, she'd just handed him his shirt - eyes big, but downcast - and gone about packing the camp. It was the morning after they'd burned down the shack, and they were both still raw and overwhelmed and hungover and neither of them wanted to do anything to upset their newly-found fragile camaraderie.

But this is different, different because he wants to show her now, wants to show her the good marks, the tattoos she likes so much as well as the bad. He wants to be completely honest with her after today, after the run, after what happened downstairs.

He doesn't though. Not yet. Not when everything is so fragile and the want and need in him is so great. Not that he plans on stripping off right there or anything, pulling off the vest and going "hey Beth, check it out". But for the first time in his life, he wants to tell someone how they got there, tell her about his Ma and her wine and his old man and his belt. Tell her about Merle and his leaving. He wonders how she would respond, but he knows already. Because if she can respond like this after what happened downstairs, he knows he's totally safe. That no matter what he says, she'll be that soft landing for him, that cocoon he can lose himself in.

She asks him about the dragon and the star. He tells her the star hurt like hell because the guy that did it didn't know what he was doing, but the dragon was alright, mostly ticklish more than painful. She says she likes it again. Likes the way he has marks that he chose to put there because he wanted them. She also says she likes his scars but she touches his side where the arrow went through him so he knows he doesn't need to talk about the others. She likes his sinew too, but mostly she likes his ink. It's sexy, she tells him with a mischievous grin, hot. And he blushes like an idiot and tells her to be quiet and go to sleep.

And she does, her breathing even, and her coughing intermittent. He knows it's just the symptoms being covered but it's enough for now.

And just as he's drifting off she rolls into his arms, fixing herself against his chest, small hand fisted in the cotton of his vest. He kisses her hair and she mumbles something as he wraps his arms around her and pulls her close.

She looks up at him sleepily, a dopey smile on her face, no doubt exhaustion and meds hard at work.

"Am I good to you Beth?" he asks, touching her jaw.

She frowns even as her eyes droop and she looks confused.

And then she snuggles against him again and just as he's about to fall asleep he swears he hears her tell him he's a silly man. A very silly man.

And he guesses that's the most accurate and sensible thing either of them have said or done all night.

XXX

The ground is red with blood, red and stinking and even in the cold, he can smell it, smell the coppery tang as it fills his nostrils and it makes him want to retch.

Maggie, however, _is_ already retching, somewhere near the fence. Rick, Carl and Michonne stand a few feet away from her looking at him accusingly until he snaps out of it and goes to her side and holds her hair out of the way.

She vomits again and he rubs her back.

"I'm ok," she says but he knows she's not. None of them are.

Abraham and Bob are moving bodies, and even though he thought himself stronger than this his stomach heaves again at the carnage. They couldn't have done this alone, couldn't have gotten out by themselves. And it's amazing that Carol and Tyreese showed up when they did. Fate or something.

Couldn't have done it without them. And yet Rick's expression is concerned and Maggie could barely look at Carol when she arrived and he doesn't know why. Too many secrets, too many losses in this group. They're broken again. As broken as they were the night the Greene farm burned to the ground.

Eventually Maggie straightens and he wraps an arm around her as they look out at Terminus.

"What now?" he asks.

"Now, we make it a home," she says.

"You want to stay here? Here? Where they ate people?"

"We stayed in a prison," she answers. "Our standards ain't exactly high."

She has a point.

"Beggars can't be choosers," he shrugs.

"No," she says looking at Carol. "No, they can't."

* * *

**The book Daryl is thinking about is called **_**Domain **_**by the late James Herbert. It's the final book in **_**The Rats**_ **series although it works just fine as a standalone and is so freaking scary. **


End file.
